al-Naḥl 16:68-69

Wa awḥā rabbuka ila'l-naḥli ani'ttakhidhī mina'l-jibāli buyūtan wa mina'l-shajari wa mimmā yaʿrishūn · Thumma kulī min kulli'l-thamarāti fa'slukī subula rabbiki dhululā, yakhruju min buṭūnihā sharābun mukhtalifun alwānuhū fīhi shifāʾun li'l-nās, inna fī dhālika la-āyatan li-qawmin yatafakkarūn

"Your Lord revealed to the honey bee: 'Take houses in the mountains, in the trees, and in the trellises men put up. · Then eat of every kind of fruit, and enter the ways of your Lord in submission.' From their bellies comes a drink of differing colours, in which there is healing for people. In that there is a sign for a people who think."

This is where the sūra takes its name, and I treat this verse in detail, because the use of the word gives direct information about the Qurʾān's vocabulary.

Root: و-ح-ي. The root was analysed in detail at al-Najm, 53/4, and the same analysis was relied upon at al-Shūrā, 42/3. I rely on that treatment and bring its definition over here:

"The concrete sense of the root: swift and hidden communication. The definition the lexicographers give joins two features of the word — speed and concealment. To convey by a sign, by a whisper, by the short way." "There is no 'sacredness' at the centre of the word; there is speed and concealment." (The same note was entered in al-Zilzāl.)

And in the al-Najm section the field of the root's use was tabulated, and this verse was already named there. I complete the table from here:

The conclusion recorded in the al-Najm section can be carried straight over here, and I repeat it: these usages show that the root does not carry the sense "prophethood". The root names only the manner of the communication: swift, direct, without an intermediary, most often by an unseen route.

Now I add what belongs here, and I record it as my own reading, its ground being the primary sense of the root:

The two features of the root — speed and concealment — are exactly met in the case of the bee.

The word, then, is used not in a figure but in its own primary sense. And this is a fact about language that must be recorded: because in English the word "revelation" is used only in the setting of prophecy, this verse reads oddly in English. In Arabic it does not — for the word names the character of the communication, not the one it is addressed to.

And I go no further than this: the verse names where the bee's knowledge comes from; it does not describe how it works.

And there is a striking feature in the wording: the imperatives are in the feminine singular.

al-Naḥl is a generic noun in Arabic that may be treated as masculine or as feminine; the verse chooses the feminine inflection. The lexicographers put this down to the word's being a generic noun and to the prevalence of the feminine usage.

And the verb's pronoun is singular, but the next sentence passes into the plural: yakhruju min buṭūnihā — "from their bellies". The lexicographers explain this by the distinction between the form and the sense of a generic noun.

And one further note: the order of the commands builds an order of life.

I record this as an observation about the word order: three commands are given, and the fourth sentence is not a command. The coming forth of the honey is not commanded — it is announced as the outcome of the three commands.

عَرْش, root ع-ر-ش: to raise, to put up a roof, to build a trellis. ʿArsh — a raised throne; ʿarīsh — a vine trellis.

And the pronoun must be recorded: yaʿrishūn — plural, third person, human beings. The third kind of house is thus what men build.

I give this as an observation: the verse enumerates three shelters — mountain, tree, and human construction. Man is not outside the order the verse sets out; he is named as an item within it.

سَلَكَ — root س-ل-ك: to enter upon a way, to be threaded into something. Silk — a string, to thread on a string.

ذُلُلًا — root ذ-ل-ل: to submit, to be docile. The plural of dhalūl; it is used of a tame, broken-in animal — dābbatun dhalūl, a beast easy to ride.

Two readings of the word's case are transmitted, and the disagreement must be recorded:

Both readings are transmitted; I do not impose a preference.

And a connection can be made with al-Ḥujurāt, and I give it as an observation: dākhirūn (bowed low) occurred in the forty-eighth verse — of the shadows and of those who prostrate. Here dhulul occurs — of the bee. Both words carry the same idea, and the sūra sets them twenty verses apart.

The construction mukhtalifun alwānuhū occurs for the second time in the sūra (in the thirteenth verse wa mā dharaʾa lakum fi'l-arḍi mukhtalifan alwānuh occurred). And at Fāṭir, 35/27-28, it had been repeated three times.

I complete the table as the fourth link:

And the fifth link stands apart from the rest. I record this as my own reading, its ground being the list itself: in the first four links the diversity is in the created thing itself — fruit, stone, living creature, what is strewn on the earth. In the fifth link the diversity is in what a living creature produces.

The construction thus passes from direct creation to an intermediary. And the conclusion recorded at Fāṭir, 35/28 — three distinct domains, one shared attribute: diversity — goes one step further here: in products as well.

And in Fāṭir this threesome was followed by innamā yakhsha'llāha min ʿibādihi'l-ʿulamāʾ — the conclusion of a list of observations. In al-Naḥl what follows is li-qawmin yatafakkarūn. The two sūras tie the same fact to two different capacities: the one to knowing, the other to thinking.

Care is needed here, and per the method (Method) the limit must be set openly.

شِفَآء — root ش-ف-ي: to be healed; and to come to the edge, to the brink of a thing. Shafā — an edge, a brink (in the Qurʾān, shafā ḥufratin — the brink of a pit). The lexicographers join the two branches: shifāʾ is to come to the edge of an illness and to pass beyond it.

The wording of the verse is this, and nothing is added to it: fīhi shifāʾun li'l-nās — "in it there is healing for people."

Three things must be recorded in the wording, and all three can be verified from the text:

These three notes are the textual barrier against turning the verse into a medical claim. The sentence is not a prescription; it is a nominal sentence with an indefinite noun.

And the classical exegetes too have differed over the scope of this expression. The disagreement must be set out in a table:

The third view is a minority one and is weak in point of word order — the nearest referent is sharāb. But it is transmitted, and I record it. I do not impose a preference.

And no medical ruling is issued in this commentary. The wording of the verse says that there is a benefit in a substance; for which disease, in what measure, on what condition — none of this is in the verse, and none of it is written here.

As my own reading I record only this, its ground being the closing of the verse: having said fīhi shifāʾun li'l-nās, the sentence does not stop — inna fī dhālika la-āyatan li-qawmin yatafakkarūn. The verse itself turns the attention from the honey to thinking. And the word used in the sixty-sixth verse should be recalled: ʿibra — the place where one crosses.

The sūra takes its name from this verse, and this is worth recording.

I give this as an observation: the sūra has a hundred and twenty-eight verses, and within it are prophetic narratives, rulings, parables, history. It takes its name from a passage about a bee two verses long.

And that passage stands in the very middle of the sūra's enumeration of favours. The naming thus points to the sūra's backbone: an item from within the enumeration has become the name of the whole.