وَٱلْأَنْعَٰمَ خَلَقَهَا لَكُمْ فِيهَا دِفْءٌ وَمَنَٰفِعُ وَمِنْهَا تَأْكُلُونَ
And the construction of the opening must be recorded. The sentence does not say khalaqa'l-anʿāma lakum. It says: wa'l-anʿāma khalaqahā — the object is brought forward, and then the verb takes it up again with a pronoun.
In Arabic this is called ishtighāl, and the lexicographers record that it conveys ihtimām (giving prominence). The first item of the enumeration is thus brought forward at the level of word order too.
And the choice of that first item is worth recording: the enumeration begins not from the sky and not from the sea but from just outside the door of the house.
The concrete sense of the root: to grow warm, warmth. Difāʾ — the thing that warms; dafiya — he grew warm.
The lexicographers explain the word here specifically as clothing made from wool, hair and hide — that is, not the heat the animal gives off but the warming thing got from the animal. And this explanation has an internal ground: in the eighty-first verse sarābīla taqīkumu'l-ḥarr (garments that guard you from the heat) will occur, and in the eightieth wa min aṣwāfihā wa awbārihā wa ashʿārihā (from their wool, their fur and their hair).
What the sūra says in a single word in the fifth verse it thus repeats, unfolded, in the eightieth and eighty-first. This is a weave that can be verified from the text.
| Order | Expression | What |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Difʾ | Warmth — staying alive |
| 2 | Manāfiʿ | Benefits — left indefinite, plural |
| 3 | Wa minhā taʾkulūn | Food |
The middle item is worth recording: manāfiʿ is plural and its content is not given. Even in its first item, then, the list is left open within itself. This is a small rehearsal of what will be done openly in the eighth verse with wa yakhluqu mā lā taʿlamūn.
At Muḥammad, 47/12, it was already recorded that the word anʿām is tied to the list of favours in this sūra; I rely on that treatment.