قُلْ إِنَّمَآ أُنذِرُكُم بِٱلْوَحْىِ وَلَا يَسْمَعُ ٱلصُّمُّ ٱلدُّعَآءَ إِذَا مَا يُنذَرُونَ · وَلَئِن مَّسَّتْهُمْ نَفْحَةٌ مِّنْ عَذَابِ رَبِّكَ لَيَقُولُنَّ يَٰوَيْلَنَآ إِنَّا كُنَّا ظَٰلِمِينَ
Qul innamā undhirukum bi'l-waḥy, wa lā yasmaʿu'ṣ-ṣummu'd-duʿāʾa idhā mā yundharūn · Wa la-in massathum nafḥatun min ʿadhābi rabbika la-yaqūlunna yā waylanā innā kunnā ẓālimīn
"Say: 'I warn you only by revelation.' But the deaf do not hear the call when they are warned. · And if a breath of your Lord's punishment were to touch them, they would surely say: 'Woe to us! We were indeed doing wrong.'"
Innamā is the particle of restriction: "only, nothing but". And what is restricted is the instrument of the warning: bi'l-waḥy.
I record this as my own reading, its ground being the fifth verse: there the addressees had asked for an āya — a visible sign. Here the answer is given: the only thing in my hands is revelation. That is, the verse also says what the instrument in the messenger's hand is not.
At al-Furqān on 25/56 and at Sabaʾ on 34/28 the scope of the messengership was given with two different words; this verse gives its instrument. The three will be tabulated at the hundred and seventh verse.
وَلَا يَسْمَعُ ٱلصُّمُّ ٱلدُّعَآءَ — the counterpart of this sentence was treated at al-Rūm on 30/52: fa-innaka lā tusmiʿu'l-mawtā wa lā tusmiʿu'ṣ-ṣumma'd-duʿāʾ. I rely on that treatment.
| al-Rūm 30/52 | al-Anbiyāʾ 21/45 | |
|---|---|---|
| The verb | lā tusmiʿu — Form IV: you cannot make them hear | lā yasmaʿu — Form I: they do not hear |
| The subject | The Prophet | The deaf |
| What it says | The limit of the messenger's power | The consequence of the addressee's state |
And the forty-sixth verse is one of the finest pieces of word order in the sūra. Three separate diminishings come one upon another in the sentence:
| Element | Root | What it diminishes |
|---|---|---|
| massat | م-س-س | To touch — not to strike but to graze |
| nafḥatun | ن-ف-ح | A breath — a slight stirring of scent or of wind |
| min ʿadhābi | — | Min partitive: a part of the punishment |
Nafḥa — root ن-ف-ح: to blow lightly, for a scent to spread. Nafaḥa'ṭ-ṭīb — the perfume spread. And the word carries a tāʾ (nafḥa, not nafḥ): in Arabic the tāʾ of unity conveys a single instance — "one single breath".
And what they will say in return is given: yā waylanā innā kunnā ẓālimīn — the very sentence spoken by the town destroyed in the fourteenth verse.
I record this as my own reading, its ground being that the two sentences are word for word the same: the forty-sixth verse repeats hypothetically and on the smallest scale what in the fourteenth verse actually happened. That is, the sūra shows this: the lightest touch produces the same sentence as the gravest destruction.
The lightness of the root م-س-س was recorded at Ṣād on 38/41: "what distinguishes the word is its lightness: mass is to touch a thing — not to strike, not to hit." I rely on that treatment. And the same verb will be used of Job in the eighty-third verse of this sūra: massaniya'ḍ-ḍurr.