وَٱللَّهُ يَعْلَمُ مَا تُسِرُّونَ وَمَا تُعْلِنُونَ · وَٱلَّذِينَ يَدْعُونَ مِن دُونِ ٱللَّهِ لَا يَخْلُقُونَ شَيْـًٔا وَهُمْ يُخْلَقُونَ · أَمْوَٰتٌ غَيْرُ أَحْيَآءٍ وَمَا يَشْعُرُونَ أَيَّانَ يُبْعَثُونَ
Wa'llāhu yaʿlamu mā tusirrūna wa mā tuʿlinūn · Wa'lladhīna yadʿūna min dūni'llāhi lā yakhluqūna shayʾan wa hum yukhlaqūn · Amwātun ghayru aḥyāʾ, wa mā yashʿurūna ayyāna yubʿathūn
"And God knows what you conceal and what you make known. · And those they call upon besides God create nothing; they themselves are created. · They are dead, not living; nor do they know when they will be raised."
The seventeenth verse had asked: a-fa-man yakhluqu ka-man lā yakhluq. The twentieth gives the answer, and in giving it uses the same root.
| Verse | Expression | Form |
|---|---|---|
| 17 | A-fa-man yakhluqu ka-man lā yakhluq | A question — active verb, two sides |
| 20 | Lā yakhluqūna shayʾan wa hum yukhlaqūn | The answer — active and passive side by side |
The construction of the answer must be recorded: the verse does not say only "they cannot create". It turns the same root into the passive and adds: wa hum yukhlaqūn — "they themselves are created."
I give this as an observation about the word order: the position claimed and the position in fact are set against each other by the two voices of a single root. The other side is found in exactly the reverse form of its own claim.
The lexicographers count additions of this kind as taʾkīd (emphasis). But one further explanation belonging here must be recorded, and I give it as my own reading: in Arabic mawt is used also of what has never lived — an inanimate object is mayyit too. The qualification ghayru aḥyāʾ marks off this second sense: what is at issue is not a thing that has died but a thing that has never been alive.
And at Fāṭir, 35/13-14, the same subject was closed off in three stages (they do not hear → were they to hear they could not answer → in the end they reject). I rely on that treatment and record the difference here: Fāṭir was treating the impossibility of communication; al-Naḥl, the character of existence.
وَمَا يَشْعُرُونَ أَيَّانَ يُبْعَثُونَ — and the pronoun must be recorded. Yubʿathūn — when "they will be raised". The sentence thus says that the objects called upon are themselves inside a process of being raised.
The lexicographers give the reference of the pronoun in two ways: either those called upon, or those who call. Both readings are transmitted; I do not impose a preference.