al-Muʾminūn 23:66-67

qad kānat āyātī tutlā ʿalaykum fa-kuntum ʿalā aʿqābikum tankiṣūn · mustakbirīna bihī sāmiran tahjurūn

"My signs were being recited to you, and you were drawing back on your heels — puffed up with pride against it, talking nonsense by night."

This sentence will return almost word for word in the hundred and fifth verse of the sūra:

The same sentence, once as a statement and once as a question. This is a repetition that can be verified within the sūra.

I record this as my own reading: the sentence is said twice, and in both the same thing is recalled. The sūra, that is, shows the same reminder being made at two different times — one while there is still time, the other after it has passed.

The root ن-ك-ص: to go backwards, to turn back. The lexicographers record the sense of the root as "to draw back from a work one has begun".

أَعْقَاب — the plural of ʿaqib: heels. The root ع-ق-ب: the back, the end of a thing. ʿĀqiba — outcome; taʿqīb — coming after; ʿuqbā — the end.

The picture in the idiom must be recorded: ʿalā aʿqābikum tankiṣūn — to go backwards on one's heels. That is, not to turn and flee; to withdraw while the face stays turned the same way.

I give this as my own reading, its ground being this picture in the idiom: the movement is not a turning away but a drawing back. Moving off while still looking at what is being said.

The same idiom occurs elsewhere in the Qurʾān as well — Āl ʿImrān 3/144 (inqalabtum ʿalā aʿqābikum), al-Anfāl 8/48, al-Māʾida 5/21.

The exegetes differ over what the pronoun bihī in the sentence refers back to, and this is the most disputed place in the verse:

I pass the disagreement on; I do not impose a preference.

It is transmitted that the second reading has a historical ground: the Meccans counted the service of the Kaʿba a mark of superiority. I pass this historical frame on as it is transmitted.

The concrete sense of the root: to converse by night. Samar — the darkness of the night and the talk carried on in that darkness; sāmir — one who talks by night; summār — night talkers.

The root is worked out here for the first time in this series.

The word order must be recorded: sāmiran is singular, yet it comes as a circumstantial accusative to a plural. The lexicographers explain this by counting it a generic noun: a singular form reporting a group.

And the scene the word carries is worth recording, and I give this as my own reading, its ground being the "night" sense of the root: the verse describes not a debate but a gathering for talk at night. Not a place where anything is decided, a place where things are said.

The root ه-ج-ر: to part, to abandon; and to speak deliriously (hujr). The root was treated at al-Furqān 25/30 (ittakhadhū hādhā'l-qurʾāna mahjūrā), at al-Muzzammil 73/10 and at al-Muddaththir 74/5. I do not repeat it here.

The variant reading must be recorded, and it bears on the meaning:

Both readings are transmitted; I do not impose a preference.

And at al-Furqān 25/30 the two branches of this root were tabulated:

I rely on that treatment. And what belongs here is the comparison of the two verses:

The same root, in two sūras, around the same subject. This is an overlap that can be verified from the two texts.