وَيَدْعُ ٱلْإِنسَٰنُ بِٱلشَّرِّ دُعَآءَهُۥ بِٱلْخَيْرِ وَكَانَ ٱلْإِنسَٰنُ عَجُولًا
There are not two verbs but one verb and a comparison: yadʿū bi'l-sharri — he prays for evil; duʿāʾahu bi'l-khayr — as he prays for good.
The verse thus does not speak of two separate behaviours. It says that one behaviour runs in both directions with the same eagerness.
دُعَآءَهُۥ stands as an absolute object and conveys comparison: with the same insistence, in the same manner.
I record this as my own reading, and its support is the comparison itself: the verse does not say that man asks for something evil — it says that he asks for it as he would ask for something good. The problem, then, is not intention but the failure to tell the two apart. Man does not see the end of what he asks for.
The root has occurred in several places in the index: at 27/46 in al-Naml (lima tastaʿjilūna bi'l-sayyiʾati qabla'l-ḥasana) in Form X; at 38/16 in Ṣād (ʿajjil lanā qiṭṭanā) in a sentence of mockery; at 29/53-54 in al-ʿAnkabūt as the demand that the punishment be hastened; and at 19/84 in Maryam (fa-lā taʿjal ʿalayhim) as a prohibition directed at the Prophet.
al-Anbiyāʾ at present covers only the range 21/1-9 in the index; the verse khuliqa'l-insānu min ʿajal at 21/37 has not yet been analysed. For that reason I take the root up here on its own, and point to that verse only as a comparison within the Qurʾān.
The pattern of ʿajūl (faʿūl) conveys the intensive in Arabic: one who does a thing much, whose disposition it is. The verse therefore does not say "man hurried"; it says "man's disposition is haste".
| Place | Expression | What it says |
|---|---|---|
| al-Isrāʾ 17/11 | Wa kāna'l-insānu ʿajūlā | Disposition — the intensive form |
| al-Anbiyāʾ 21/37 | Khuliqa'l-insānu min ʿajal | Creation — his very material is haste |
The two verses say the same thing in two different idioms. This is an overlap that can be verified from the text, and the verse in al-Anbiyāʾ will be analysed separately when its turn comes.
Where the verse stands is worth recording: the preceding verse had named the hereafter. The following verse will name night and day, that is, time.
I record this as an observation: haste is a defect that has to do with time — and the verse is set between two verses about time. The hereafter is far off, night and day are regular; the man in haste can wait for neither.