al-Nūr 24:17-18

Yaʿiẓukumu'llāhu an taʿūdū li-mithlihī abadan in kuntum muʾminīn · Wa yubayyinu'llāhu lakumu'l-āyāt, wa'llāhu ʿalīmun ḥakīm

"God admonishes you never to return to the like of it, if you are believers. And God makes the verses clear to you. God is knowing, wise."

Root: و-ع-ظ. The sense the lexicographers record: to remind a man in a way that softens his heart and holds him back from a deed. Mawʿiẓa — an admonition.

In the definition of the word there are two elements at once: reminding and holding back. Waʿẓ, that is, is not the giving of knowledge; it is the bringing back of something known, in a way that changes behaviour.

And this is on the same line as tadhakkarūn in the first verse. In both places the sūra speaks not of giving new knowledge but of calling back something known.

Two words in the expression are worth noting.

The first: li-mithlihī — "to the like of it". The verse does not say "do not return to this"; it says "to anything like this".

This carries the scope of the ruling out of the event and over to the kind. What is forbidden is not a particular report but everything of that kind.

I record this as an observation about the word order and find it in agreement with the measure recorded in al-Ḥujurāt: there too it was stated that the verses regulate not single events but kinds of event.

The second: abadā — "never". And this word occurred in the fourth verse too: wa lā taqbalū lahum shahādatan abadā.

The two usages answer each other, and I record this as my own reading: the one closes a door, the other a road. And between the two stands the note of repentance in the fifth verse.

This conditional clause occurs for the second time in the sūra. The first was in the second verse: in kuntum tuʾminūna bi'llāhi wa'l-yawmi'l-ākhir.

In both places the condition is set against a feeling or a habit. In the one, pity; in the other, the wish to carry a report.

I record this as an observation about the word order.

The root ب-ي-ن returns here after the first verse, and it will return again and again in the sūra: 34, 46, 58, 59, 61.

The root's distribution through the sūra builds a weave:

The root occurs ten times in the sūra, and at each occurrence a work of separating is done. This shows how the sūra names its own work.

I record this as my own reading; the places of the words can be counted in the text.