al-Anbiyāʾ 21:96-97

Ḥattā idhā futiḥat Yaʾjūju wa Maʾjūju wa hum min kulli ḥadabin yansilūn · Wa'qtaraba'l-waʿdu'l-ḥaqqu fa-idhā hiya shākhiṣatun abṣāru'lladhīna kafarū, yā waylanā qad kunnā fī ghaflatin min hādhā bal kunnā ẓālimīn

"Until, when Gog and Magog are let loose and they come streaming down from every height, · and the true promise draws near, then behold: the eyes of those who denied are fixed and staring: 'Woe to us! We were in heedlessness of this — no, we were wrongdoers!'"

The Qurʾān speaks of these two names here and in Sūrat al-Kahf (18/94). They do not occur anywhere else.

And about their identity, their place or their number the Qurʾān says nothing. I record this per the method (Method): that gap will not be filled in this commentary. Various explanations are found in the classical commentaries and in the history books; not one of them is information the Qurʾān has given, and none is transmitted in this commentary.

And a point of grammar: the verb futiḥat (was opened) has come in the feminine; the grammarians attach this to an elided governing noun such as sadd (the barrier) or jiha (the direction). A variant reading is transmitted as well: futiḥat and futtiḥat (with doubling). The second conveys multiplicity and emphasis; I name no reciter.

حَدَب — root ح-د-ب: a height, a mound, a place swelling up like a back. Aḥdab — hunchbacked. In the picture of the word there is a swelling.

يَنسِلُون — root ن-س-ل: to advance fast and in succession. And from the same root nasl — offspring, progeny: what comes one after another. That is, the verb conveys coming in succession, not one by one.

I give this as a note about the word.

And now I come to the sūra's plainest structural fact. It is wholly a datum of the text.

The first verse was this:

Iqtaraba li'n-nāsi ḥisābuhum wa hum fī ghaflatin muʿriḍūn

The ninety-seventh verse is this:

Wa'qtaraba'l-waʿdu'l-ḥaqq … qad kunnā fī ghaflatin min hādhā

Both words are word for word the same: iqtaraba and fī ghaflatin. Ninety-six verses later, the sūra puts its opening sentence into the mouth of the one addressed.

I record this as my own reading, its ground being the table above: the sūra's first sentence was a finding; in the last section the same finding comes back as an admission. And the only thing that has changed in between is who says it.

شَٰخِصَة — root ش-خ-ص: for a thing to rise up from its place, to be set up and stay fixed. Shakhṣ — a standing shape seen from afar. And when used of the eye: to be fixed on a point without blinking.

And a point of word order: fa-idhā hiya shākhiṣatun abṣāru… — the grammarians count the hiya here a pronoun of the case (ḍamīr al-shaʾn): "and then, the case is that…". And the idhā is again the idhā of surprise: "and behold."

بَلْ كُنَّا ظَٰلِمِينَ — and the sūra's refrain for the third time. But here there is an addition, and it must be recorded: the admission is corrected.

Bal — the particle that abandons the preceding statement and puts a new one in its place. The sentence first says "we were heedless", then takes it back with bal and says "no, we were wrongdoers".

I record this as my own reading, its ground being the particle: the admission removes its own excuse. Heedlessness could have been a defence; bal cancels it.

And the comparison with the fourteenth verse confirms this:

The third occurrence is set apart from the first two by a bal. It is a fact that can be verified within the sūra.