2/25 — The other side: the good news
"Give good news to those who believe and do righteous deeds: for them are gardens with rivers running beneath them…"
Immediately after the verse of punishment comes the verse of good news. This is the general rhythm of the Qurʾān: threat and good news are never left alone.
بَشِّرْ — give good news. Root b-sh-r, and the primary sense of this root is skin: bashara is the outer skin of the face. Good news is given this name because good news shows in the skin of the face — when a person receives good news his face opens, his colour changes. From the same root comes bashar (human being): the creature whose skin shows, who is not covered with fur.
جَنَّة — garden. Root j-n-n: to cover, to conceal. The derivatives of this root are surprisingly wide, and all of them turn around invisibility:
- janīn — the one covered in the womb
- jinn — the unseen creature
- majnūn — one whose mind is covered over
- mijann — a shield (that one hides behind)
- janna — the garden that covers the ground with its trees
The word janna, then, carries both "the garden that covers with its greenery" and "what is hidden from sight". What is promised is, by its very definition, what cannot now be seen.
مُتَشَٰبِهًا — "resembling one another". A qualification used of the fruits of the garden in the sense of "like what is in this world, but not the same". This determines how all the descriptions of the hereafter are to be read: the account has to be made by way of things the hearer knows — because language can find no material other than human experience. That the descriptions are sensory follows not from what is described being sensory but from there being no other way to tell it.