al-Anbiyāʾ 21:34-35

Wa mā jaʿalnā li-basharin min qablika'l-khuld, a-fa-in mitta fa-humu'l-khālidūn · Kullu nafsin dhāʾiqatu'l-mawt, wa nablūkum bi'sh-sharri wa'l-khayri fitnatan wa ilaynā turjaʿūn

"We gave no human being before you deathlessness. If you die, then, will they live on? · Every soul will taste death. We try you with evil and with good, as a testing. And to Us you will be returned."

The thirty-fourth verse sets up an analogy, and the analogy turns the addressee's own expectation back upon him.

I record this as my own reading, its ground being the structure of the question: the addressees were waiting for the Prophet's death. The verse does not reject that expectation — it asks about its consequence: a-fa-in mitta fa-humu'l-khālidūn? "If you die, will they live on?"

That is, the sentence puts the holder of the expectation under the same ruling. Even if the thing expected were true, it gains the one who expects it nothing.

ٱلْخُلْد — root خ-ل-د: to remain long, to be lasting. And the word occurred in the eighth verse of the sūra: wa mā kānū khālidīn. The two verses repeat the same ruling, one of the past messengers and one of all human beings. It is a repetition that can be verified within the sūra.

This sentence was treated at al-ʿAnkabūt on 29/57, and its connection with the following verse was recorded there. I rely on that treatment.

The note at al-ʿAnkabūt was this:

"Read together, the two verses enter, immediately after the call to migrate, the note that one will die in any case. That is, changing one's place is not fleeing death — it is choosing in what state one dies."

And the difference between the two sūras is in what is set beside the sentence:

What al-Anbiyāʾ adds is the middle sentence, and it is treated here for the first time in this commentary.

ذَآئِقَة — an active participle, feminine. Root ذ-و-ق: to taste. And the choice of the verb is worth recording: death is given not as something met but as something tasted. Dhawq is the nearest and most personal of the senses. That is, the sentence names death not as an event coming from outside but as an experience passed through from within.

And this is the real thing al-Anbiyāʾ adds.

The root ب-ل-و: to test a thing by wearing it down; balā — to wear out, to fray. Testing is, by its root, a bringing out by abrasion.

The root ف-ت-ن was treated in detail at al-ʿAnkabūt on 29/2-10 (melting gold in fire to test it), and at al-Furqān on 25/20 it was recorded that the word comes by the hand of people. I rely on those treatments.

Fitnatan is in the accusative, and the grammarians count it either an object of purpose (mafʿūl lah) or an emphatic verbal noun: "as a testing" or "by way of testing".

And there is a point of word order in the sequence: bi'sh-sharri wa'l-khayr — evil first, then good.

In Arabic the expected order is generally that the good is put first. Here it is reversed. I record this as an observation about the structure and build no ruling upon it; I add only this: what precedes the sentence is death — that is, the side of evil is already under discussion; the order fits the context.

Now I come to the pair itself. And this is the place in the verse that most needs to be dwelt on.

The sentence counts two things at once as a testing:

I record this as my own reading, its ground being that the same verb (nablū) is shared by both prepositional phrases: the verse sets up no difference of degree between the two states. Both are the object of the same verb.

And what this requires must be written out: if evil alone were a testing, good would be a reward and would convey a ruling about the one who has it. The verse blocks this. What has been given is as open-ended as what has not.

The sūra itself applies this in two places, and both are in the series of prophets:

And in the series both are named in the same way: both end in deliverance. I record this as my own reading, its ground being the standing of the two stories side by side in the sūra.

And one further link within the sūra: the same word will occur once more in the hundred and eleventh verse — wa in adrī laʿallahu fitnatun lakum wa matāʿun ilā ḥīn. The sūra names the notion of testing both in its middle and at its end.