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-one 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 (al-Malāʾika), 35/27-28, it had been repeated three times.

I complete the table as the fifth 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 (al-Malāʾika), 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.