al-Nūr 24:28

Fa-in lam tajidū fīhā aḥadan fa-lā tadkhulūhā ḥattā yuʾdhana lakum, wa in qīla lakumu'rjiʿū fa'rjiʿū, huwa azkā lakum, wa'llāhu bimā taʿmalūna ʿalīm

"If you find no one in them, do not enter until leave is given you. And if you are told 'go back', then go back; that is more purifying for you. God knows what you do."

The verse fills the two gaps the twenty-seventh left:

And what the two rulings have in common is worth recording: in both, the prohibition rests upon an absence of answer or upon a refusal.

The first possibility looks unnecessary at first: if there is no one, there is no one to give leave either; so what is there to wait for?

But the verse's logic is this, and I record it as my own reading: the twenty-seventh verse had commanded the asking of leave. And a man who gets no answer is inclined to count leave as given — "there is no one, so I may go in". The verse closes off that inference.

Silence, that is, is not leave. This is a concrete note that can be read from the arrangement.

The second half of the verse does something finer than the first, and its arrangement is worth noting.

The same verb occurs twice: irjiʿū (go back) and fa'rjiʿū (then go back). The one is the word spoken, the other the command given.

The verse, that is, puts the householder's word directly in the place of a ruling. No ground is asked for, no reason is required, no insistence is made.

And this is a thing worth recording: the verse lays no obligation upon the householder to "say why". The refusal is valid without being explained.

I record this as my own reading; its ground is that the verse lays down no condition of a reason.

The root ز-ك-و was analysed at the twenty-first verse. Its concrete sense: to increase, to grow; and to be cleansed.

The form is an elative: azkā — "more purifying, cleaner". And the other side of the comparison is not stated: more purifying than what?

The rule the classical lexicographers record is this: the omission of the compared term after an elative leaves the comparison wide. "Than insisting", "than being hurt", "than resenting" — all fall within its scope.

And the placing of the word azkā here says something worth recording, which I give as my own reading:

To be turned back from a door touches a man's pride. And the verse gives this situation the name of a purification. Going back, that is, is placed not as something lost but as something gained.

And the same word will come again two verses later: dhālika azkā lahum (30) — the outcome of lowering the glance. Both commands are commands to hold back, and both are rewarded with the same word.

I record this parallel as my own reading; the sameness of the words is the wording of the text.

The verse-ending is almost the same as that of al-Ḥujurāt, 49/18: wa'llāhu baṣīrun bimā taʿmalūn.

The difference is a single word: al-Ḥujurāt has baṣīr (seeing), al-Nūr ʿalīm (knowing).

And the difference agrees with the subject of the two sūras, and I record this as my own reading:

The last verse of al-Ḥujurāt took as its subject a man's claim about himself — something that cannot be told apart from outside. There baṣīr is fitting: the one who sees what is not seen.

al-Nūr 24/28 takes as its subject something that happens before a door — a moment no one sees: the door is knocked at, no answer comes, and the man decides alone what to do. There ʿalīm is fitting: the one who knows what is not known.

This is not a claim of preference but an observation of reading.