2/155-157 — Five losses and two sentences
"We shall surely test you with something of fear and hunger, and with loss of property, lives and fruits. And give good news to the patient."
The list is not abstract; it is the order of things a community can concretely undergo. And there is a detail that must be recorded: "something of" (bi-shayʾin min). The verse sets a limit at the outset on the amount of the testing.
The root بَلَاء — as we saw at verse 49, b-l-w: to test by wearing down. The Qurʾān said elsewhere that this is not one-directional: "We test you with evil and with good" (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/35). The list here enumerates the bad ones; but as is seen in Sūrat al-Fajr, abundance is named with the same verb.
Root ṣ-w-b: to hit the mark, to find the target. This root has occurred at two earlier places in this commentary:
- al-Baqara 2/125 — mathāba: the place returned to
- At the nineteenth verse of this sūra — ṣayyib: the downpour that finds its target
From the same root come iṣāba and ṣawāb (right). A muṣība, then, in the word's own logic, is "what hits" — not what falls at random but what finds its target. The word says from the outset that there is a direction inside the event.
The sentence to be said at the moment of affliction contains two distinct propositions, and the two do distinct work:
"We belong to God." — This is a declaration of ownership. What is lost — property, life, fruits — was never the person's own. The loss is not the passing away of something possessed; it is the taking back of a trust. This is in the same line as the clause "of what We have provided them" at the third verse of the sūra.
"And to Him we are returning." — This is a declaration of direction. The loss is not the end of the story; the story itself is going somewhere else.
Together the two sentences do not deny the pain. The verse does not say "do not grieve"; grieving is indeed not a forbidden thing. What is said is this: if it is known what has been lost and where one is going, the loss ceases to be meaningless. The pain is not lifted; it is saved from being without ground.
وَبَشِّرِ ٱلصَّٰبِرِينَ — "and give good news to the patient". We saw at al-Baqara 2/25 that the root of the word for good news is bashara (skin), that is, that good news is seen in the face. Here good news is given to a condition that as yet has no visible outcome.