al-Naḥl 16:90

Inna'llāha yaʾmuru bi'l-ʿadli wa'l-iḥsāni wa ītāʾi dhi'l-qurbā wa yanhā ʿani'l-faḥshāʾi wa'l-munkari wa'l-baghy, yaʿiẓukum laʿallakum tadhakkarūn

"God commands justice, doing good, and giving to kinsfolk; and He forbids indecency, what is wrong, and oppression. He admonishes you — that you may take heed."

The structure of the verse is symmetrical and must be set out in a table:

And the symmetry is not only in number but in order. I record this as my own reading, and my ground is the reading of the two lists against each other:

The commands run from the general to the particular: justice (to everyone), iḥsān (to everyone, but with more than is due), giving to kinsfolk (to a definite circle). The prohibitions run from the particular to the general: faḥshāʾ (concerning a man himself and those close to him), munkar (what the society does not acknowledge), baghy (spilling over into another's domain).

The two lists thus run in opposite directions and meet in the middle. I do not rest this reading on a transmitted report; my ground is the scope of the words.

I treat this difference in detail, because the relation between the verse's first two words carries the weight of the whole sentence.

عَدْل — root ع-د-ل. The root was treated at al-Ḥujurāt, 49/9, and compared there with qisṭ. I rely on that treatment and take over its note:

"عَدْل — root ع-د-ل. Its primary sense is to make even, to equalise, to set straight. The two pans of a balance coming level. Taʿdīl — correcting, evening out."

And another derivative of the root bears out this picture: ʿadl also means "the equivalent of a thing" — in the Qurʾān it has the sense of "an equal recompense" in usages such as aw ʿadlu dhālika ṣiyāmā (al-Māʾida 5/95). At the centre of the word, then, stands equivalence.

إِحْسَان — root ح-س-ن. The root was treated at al-Mulk, 67/2, and at al-Sajda, 32/7. The note there:

"Beneath the root lies the idea of fitness and aptness: ḥasan is a thing's being as it ought to be. Iḥsān comes from the same root and means 'to do a work giving it its full due'."

Now I set the two words against each other:

The difference of form must be recorded, and it is an observation about the language: iḥsān is of Form IV, and in Arabic this form conveys the carrying of the act over to another. Aḥsana ilayhi — he did him good. Even in the pattern of the word, then, there is a movement "towards another".

And the order of the two words is worth recording: first ʿadl, then iḥsān.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is that order: iḥsān does not take the place of justice — it is laid on top of it. The surplus is meaningful only after the equivalence has been provided. A surplus given without the equivalence becomes a cover for a right left unpaid.

And at al-Shūrā, 42/40-43, these two steps were treated by way of another pair — mithl (an equal recompense) and ʿafw (pardon). The pattern recorded there is the same: the right is measured, the surplus is left unmeasured. The two verses build the same structure with two different pairs of words:

This is an overlap verifiable across the sūras.

The third command differs from the first two: it is not a concept but an act and an object.

The construction was treated at al-Rūm, 30/38, and at al-Isrāʾ, 17/26 (fa-āti dha'l-qurbā ḥaqqah), and the word ḥaqqahū was dwelt on there: what is given is not a gift but a right. I rely on those treatments.

The difference here must be recorded: al-Rūm and al-Isrāʾ say ḥaqqahū; al-Naḥl does not. Here, then, the command is laid down not as the paying of a right but as the act of giving.

ف-ح-ش — root: an ugliness that exceeds measure. Fāḥish — excessive, going past the bound. The root was treated in al-Nūr and at al-Isrāʾ, 17/32; I do not repeat it here.

ن-ك-ر — what is not recognised, what is found strange. And the word has already occurred twice in the sūra: qulūbuhum munkira (their hearts are in denial) in the twenty-second verse, thumma yunkirūnahā (then they deny it) in the eighty-third. In the ninetieth the same root returns as a moral category: al-munkar.

This is a repetition verifiable within the sūra, and I record this as my own reading: in the sūra the same root occurs first as the state of a heart, then as the name of an act, and finally as a forbidden category. The act of "not recognising" thus widens from inside outwards through the sūra.

ب-غ-ي — to overstep the bound, to overflow, to pass into another's domain. The root was tabulated throughout al-Shūrā and was treated at al-Ḥujurāt, 49/9 (fa-in baghat iḥdāhumā). I rely on those treatments. And the line recorded at al-Shūrā 42/42 holds here too: the ruling is tied not to a group but to an act.

And the verse closes with a word of admonition: yaʿiẓukum.

The root و-ع-ظ: speech that softens the heart and calls consequences to mind. And the word will return once more in the hundred and twenty-fifth verse, as the second item of the method of calling: wa'l-mawʿiẓati'l-ḥasana. This is a repetition verifiable within the sūra.

I record this as my own reading: the ninetieth verse enumerates six rulings and at the end calls them not a command but an admonition. And in the hundred and twenty-fifth the same word will be the name of the task given to the one addressed. The sūra thus names the work it is itself doing, and hands that same work over to the one addressed.