al-Baqara 2:74 — Harder than stone

"Then after that your hearts hardened; like stone, or harder still. For there are stones from which rivers gush; there are stones that split and water comes out of them; and there are stones that fall down in fear of God."

Root q-s-w: to harden, to grow hard, to lose elasticity.

This word is the exact opposite of the khushūʿ of verse 45 of the sūra. There we saw that the root of khushūʿ is "to soften" and that the Qurʾān uses it of dry ground as well ("you see the earth barren; when We send down water it stirs", Fuṣṣilat 41/39). Now its contrary comes: what does not soften, does not take in water, has formed a crust.

Together the two verses set a measure: the question is not whether the knowledge arrives but whether the place it arrives at takes it in. The same water does two different things in two soils.

The real force of the verse lies in its setting up a comparison and then breaking it in favour of the thing compared to. Had it said "like stone" and stopped, that would already be a heavy verdict. But it goes on: "or harder still."

And the ground is enumerated — the three states of stone:

1. Stone from which rivers gush — giving abundantly and continuously 2. Stone that splits and lets water out — giving little, but giving 3. Stone that falls down in fear of God — giving nothing, but moving

All three show a response. Even the most barren stone at least falls — that is, it does not stay fixed. This is how the heart's being harder than stone is to be understood: even stone does something.

يَتَفَجَّرُ — root f-j-r: to split open and gush. This root has occurred at several earlier points in this commentary, and in all of them the same idea was present: the splitting of a husk and the coming out of what is inside. The words the Qurʾān chooses for fruitfulness come insistently from the root of splitting — falaq (the splitting of the dawn), falāḥ (the farmer who splits the soil), fajr, shaqq, faṭr. The hardening of the heart is exactly the reverse: what does not split, does not open, and lets nothing out.

At the fifth verse of the sūra those who attain were called mufliḥūn — "those who split through and come out". Seventy verses later the opposite tableau is complete: the heart that does not split.

This section carries the subject of the previous section one step further. There, commands were being gone round; here it is recounted what was done to the text itself.