al-Kahf 18:32-44 — The owner of the two gardens

Waḍrib lahum mathalan rajulayni jaʿalnā li-aḥadihimā jannatayni min aʿnābin wa ḥafafnāhumā bi-nakhlin wa jaʿalnā baynahumā zarʿā

"Set forth for them the example of two men: to one of them We gave two gardens of vines, and We surrounded them with date palms, and between them We placed tilled land."

The verse describes the garden in three layers: vineyards, date palms around them, tilled land between. And it reports the yield: kilta'l-jannatayni ātat ukulahā wa lam taẓlim minhu shayʾā — "both gardens gave their produce and diminished nothing of it."

وَلَمْ تَظْلِم مِّنْهُ شَيْـًٔا — the ظ-ل-م root: it was analysed in Luqmān at 31/13 (to put a thing somewhere other than its place, to make deficient). Here it is used of the garden: it did not diminish.

I record this as an observation: the same root will be used of the man himself in the thirty-fifth verse: wa dakhala jannatahu wa huwa ẓālimun li-nafsih. The garden does not diminish; its owner diminishes himself. This is a repetition that can be verified within the story.

"'I do not think that this will ever perish. Nor do I think the Hour will come.'"

Both sentences are built with the same verb: mā aẓunnu — "I do not think".

The ظ-ن-ن root was the whole axis of al-Jāthiya (45/24 in hum illā yaẓunnūn, 45/32 in naẓunnu illā ẓannā) and in Fuṣṣilat at 41/23 it was treated that conjecture is a cause of destruction. I rely on that treatment.

And the word order here must be recorded: two acts of ẓann, one after the other. The first about what is in hand (the garden will not perish), the second about the future (the Hour will not come).

I record this as my own reading: the second conjecture is given as the natural extension of the first. One who believes in the permanence of what is in hand also believes that the end will not come. And the eighth verse of the sūra was precisely the answer to this: wa innā la-jāʿilūna mā ʿalayhā ṣaʿīdan juruzā.

"'When you entered your garden, why did you not say: "What God wills comes to be; there is no power except with God"!'"

And this is tied word for word to the twenty-third verse of the sūra: wa lā taqūlanna li-shayʾin innī fāʿilun dhālika ghadan illā an yashāʾa'llāh.

The same reservation, once as a command and once as the noting of its absence. This is a repetition that can be verified within the sūra, and it is the application, in the second story, of the rule placed in the middle of the story of the cave.

The story of the owners of the garden was treated in al-Qalam at 68/17-33, and the expression wa lā yastathnūn (they made no exception) was analysed there. The two stories recount the same lack:

Two sūras show the same failing in two separate stories. I rely on that treatment.

"He began to wring his hands over what he had spent on it."

The bodily description is worth recording: yuqallibu kaffayh — he keeps turning his palms over.

In al-Furqān at 25/27 there was a description in the same field: yaʿaḍḍu'ẓ-ẓālimu ʿalā yadayh — to bite one's hands. Both sūras recount regret through the hand.

وَيَقُولُ يَٰلَيْتَنِى لَمْ أُشْرِكْ بِرَبِّىٓ أَحَدًا — and what he says is the counterpart of the sentence in the thirty-eighth verse (lākinna huwa'llāhu rabbī wa lā ushriku bi-rabbī aḥadā). What his companion said, he himself says in the end.