Ṭāhā 20:124-127

Wa man aʿraḍa ʿan dhikrī fa-inna lahu maʿīshatan ḍankan wa naḥshuruhu yawma'l-qiyāmati aʿmā · Qāla rabbi lima ḥashartanī aʿmā wa qad kuntu baṣīrā · Qāla kadhālika atatka āyātunā fa-nasītahā, wa kadhālika'l-yawma tunsā · Wa kadhālika najzī man asrafa wa lam yuʾmin bi-āyāti rabbih, wa la-ʿadhābu'l-ākhirati ashaddu wa abqā

"Whoever turns away from My remembrance, for him there is a straitened livelihood, and We shall gather him blind on the Day of Resurrection. · He will say: 'My Lord! Why have You gathered me blind, when I used to see?' · He will say: 'So it is: Our signs came to you and you forgot them; and so today you are left.' · Thus do We recompense whoever goes to excess and does not believe in the signs of his Lord. And the punishment of the hereafter is more severe and more lasting."

The root ض-ن-ك — is analysed here for the first time in the series, and the word occurs only here in the Qurʾān.

The core sense the lexicographers give: narrowness, constriction. And the concrete uses of the root are recorded:

The lexicographers record that the root is akin to ḍayyiq (narrow) and explain the difference thus: ḍayyiq is narrowness in general, while ḍank is a narrowness that presses, that stifles. I transmit this as the lexicographers record it.

مَعِيشَة — root ع-ي-ش: to live. Maʿīsha is "the life lived, the livelihood" — that is, not life in the abstract but life lived from day to day.

Now it is necessary to dwell on what the expression tells, and the disagreement must not be concealed:

I do not impose a preference.

But I record two data of the text:

One — the verse gives the two recompenses separately and in different tenses: fa-inna lahu maʿīshatan ḍankan (a nominal sentence, no time specified) and wa naḥshuruhu yawma'l-qiyāmati aʿmā (a verb, its time stated openly). That is, the time of the second recompense is specified and that of the first is not. This is an indication supporting the fourth reading — but it is not a preference.

Two — the picture in the word is narrowness, not want. The verse does not speak of poverty. And indeed the Qurʾān does not count abundance of wealth a measure in itself — as the hundred and thirty-first verse of this very sūra will say (wa lā tamuddanna ʿaynayka ilā mā mattaʿnā bihi).

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the lexical field of the word: ḍank is not the smallness of the vessel but the cramping of what is inside it. The same quantity stifles in a narrow vessel. That is, what the verse describes is not the scarcity of what one has — but the impossibility of living with what one has.

And a link within the sūra must be recorded. In the hundredth verse the recompense of the sentence beginning with the same verb (man aʿraḍa) was a load:

Both punishments name a bodily distress: one a weight that cannot be carried, the other a narrowness in which one cannot stand. This is an overlap that can be verified within the sūra.

And the exact opposite of this was treated at al-Inshirāḥ on 94/1-2: alam nashraḥ laka ṣadrak · wa waḍaʿnā ʿanka wizrak — the opening of the breast and the lifting of the load.

Two sūras use the same two pictures in opposite directions. I record this as my own reading; it is a verbal overlap between the two texts that can be verified.

What this verse says to the present rests in the choice of the word.

The verse does not say "his wealth will decrease". Ḍank — narrow. And narrowness can arise not from the quantity of what one has but from the relation one has with it.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is only the lexical field of the word: the same income, the same house, the same day — enough for one and not enough for another. The verse says where the difference lies: ʿan dhikrī — in turning away from remembrance. I do not go beyond this into building a social or psychological theory.

The contrast must be recorded, and it has been prepared for from within the sūra.

In the ninety-sixth verse the Sāmirī's first words were a claim to sight: baṣurtu bimā lam yabṣurū bih — "I saw what they did not see."

In the hundred and twenty-fifth verse another claim to sight comes: wa qad kuntu baṣīrā — "I used to see."

The same word in three places: one a claim, one an objection, one a submission. This is a distribution that can be verified from the text, and I record it as my own reading.

And a kindred verse from within the Qurʾān must be recorded: fa-innahā lā taʿma'l-abṣāru wa lākin taʿma'l-qulūbu'llatī fi'ṣ-ṣudūr (al-Ḥajj 22/46) — "it is not the eyes that go blind, but the hearts within the breasts." I name this verse only as a parallel from within the Qurʾān; I build no inference upon it and do not explain Ṭāhā's sentence by it, because Ṭāhā's own answer is given not by way of sight but, as will be seen below, by way of nisyān.

What belongs here is the sūra's own answer. And the answer does not debate what blindness is:

Qāla kadhālika atatka āyātunā fa-nasītahā, wa kadhālika'l-yawma tunsā.

A point of word order must be recorded: the answer does not say "you are blind because you did not see". The verb used is nisyān — not sight but forgetting.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the choice of verb: the objection is built on sight, the answer is given by way of memory. That is, the verse separates what the eye saw from what the mind held: the man had seen — atatka āyātunā — but he did not hold it.

Two verbs from the same root, facing one another:

And a note is required about the sense of the second verb: forgetting cannot be ascribed to God — indeed the fifty-second verse of this very sūra negated it openly: lā yaḍillu rabbī wa lā yansā.

Accordingly tunsā here has the sense of "you are left, you are abandoned", and it is explained thus in the classical commentaries as well. This is a note that can be verified from within the sūra itself — because the sentence of negation is in the same sūra.

And the four occurrences of the root ن-س-ي in the sūra are completed here — tabulated in the discussion of 20/49-52: 52 (negation), 88 (the calf), 115 (Adam), 126 (twice: the act and its recompense).

I record this as my own reading: the sūra first negates forgetting of God, then establishes it in three separate states of the human being, and at the last occurrence turns it into a recompense.

وَلَعَذَابُ ٱلْءَاخِرَةِ أَشَدُّ وَأَبْقَىٰ (127) — and Pharaoh's word occurs here for the third time.

The question Pharaoh asked is answered fifty-six verses later by the text's own sentence — and both words used are his own words: ashadd and abqā. I record this as one of the tightest links in the sūra, and it can be verified from the text.