al-Naḥl 16:97

Man ʿamila ṣāliḥan min dhakarin aw unthā wa huwa muʾminun fa-la-nuḥyiyannahū ḥayātan ṭayyiba, wa la-najziyannahum ajrahum bi-aḥsani mā kānū yaʿmalūn

"Whoever does righteous work, male or female, and is a believer — We shall surely give him a good life, and We shall surely give them their reward according to the best of what they used to do."

This verse has been named at many places in this commentary and used as the ground of a principle: in al-Wāqiʿa, in al-Nabaʾ and in al-Zukhruf — "throughout the Qurʾān it is stated openly that the recompense is not divided according to sex." I rely on those treatments and complete the ring here, from the verse's own place.

And the wording of the verse must be recorded, because it stands in a place where recording it looks unnecessary:

The sentence begins man ʿamila ṣāliḥan. Man is already inclusive — "whoever". Even so the verse adds: min dhakarin aw unthā.

I record this as an observation about the word order: grammatically the addition is not required. That it has been put in shows it was put in for the sake of the record itself.

And the verse's place within the sūra must be recorded: in verses fifty-seven to fifty-nine a society's stance towards a female child was described. In the ninety-seventh verse it is said outright that the recompense does not depend on sex.

I record this as my own reading, and my ground is that the two passages stand in the same sūra: the sūra first diagnoses a stance, then lays down a principle that removes the ground of that stance. The distance between them is thirty-eight verses, but both are within the same sūra.

The root ط-ي-ب occurred in the thirty-second verse as ṭayyibīn and in the seventy-second as ṭayyibāt. Here it is used a third time, of life.

This is a repetition verifiable within the sūra. And as was recorded at al-Ṣaff, 61/12, the shared idea of the root is this: what is acceptable, what sits well within.

And the exegetes differ over the content of the construction:

All three views are transmitted; I do not impose a preference.

But a note must be entered in point of word order, and I give it as an observation: the sentence enumerates two recompenses and separates them with a wāw — fa-la-nuḥyiyannahū ḥayātan ṭayyiba and la-najziyannahum ajrahum. Two distinct verbs, two distinct recompenses. This division suggests that the first recompense lies somewhere other than the second. This is an observation; it is not a preference within the disagreement.