ذَٰلِكَ مِمَّآ أَوْحَىٰٓ إِلَيْكَ رَبُّكَ مِنَ ٱلْحِكْمَةِ
Dhālika mimmā awḥā ilayka rabbuka mina'l-ḥikma, wa lā tajʿal maʿa'llāhi ilāhan ākhara fa-tulqā fī jahannama malūman madḥūrā
"These are among the things your Lord has revealed to you of wisdom. Do not set up another god alongside God; or you will be cast into Hell, blamed and driven away."
The thirty-ninth verse gives a name to the sixteen-verse list, and the name must be recorded: ḥikma.
The root ح-ك-م: to hold back, to bridle. The lexicographers explain the concrete sense of the root by the bridle of an animal (ḥakama) — the device that keeps a horse from going the wrong way. From this come ḥukm (a binding decision) and ḥikma (the knowledge that holds one in the right place).
And the choice of the name is worth recording. I give this as my own reading, and its support is both the sense of the root and the content of the list: most of the items in the list set a limit — do not say "ugh", do not squander, do not chain your hand, do not go near, do not go to excess, do not walk in exultation. The concrete picture of the root (the bridle) and the work of the list coincide.
And one further record: mimmā — "among the things". The list, that is, is not presented as the whole of wisdom; it is presented as a part of it. That the word conveys partitivity is a datum of the language.
I tabulated it at the twenty-second verse: the list opens with a prohibition and closes with the same prohibition.
| The opening (22) | The close (39) | |
|---|---|---|
| Prohibition | Lā tajʿal maʿa'llāhi ilāhan ākhara | Wa lā tajʿal maʿa'llāhi ilāhan ākhara |
| Consequence | Fa-taqʿuda — you will be left sitting | Fa-tulqā — you will be cast |
| Attribute 1 | Madhmūman — blamed | Malūman — blamed |
| Attribute 2 | Makhdhūlan — forsaken | Madḥūran — driven away |
I record this as my own reading, and its support is the comparison of the two verses: in the opening the verb is sitting down of oneself (taqʿuda), in the close it is being cast (tulqā) — in one the person is the subject, in the other the object. And the second of the attributes hardens in the same direction: from being forsaken to being driven away.
In saying the same prohibition twice, that is, the sūra pushes the consequence a degree further the second time. This is a difference that can be verified from the text.
No legal ruling has been issued for any of the items enumerated in this section (17/22-39). At the disputed points the views were transmitted in tables and no preference was imposed. The juristic detail of the items — amounts, conditions, penal rulings — is the subject of the literature of jurisprudence and lies outside the scope of this commentary.