al-Nūr 24:43

A-lam tara anna'llāha yuzjī saḥāban thumma yuʾallifu baynahū thumma yajʿaluhū rukāman fa-tara'l-wadqa yakhruju min khilālih, wa yunazzilu mina'l-samāʾi min jibālin fīhā min baradin fa-yuṣību bihī man yashāʾu wa yaṣrifuhū ʿan man yashāʾ, yakādu sanā barqihī yadhhabu bi'l-abṣār

"Have you not seen that God drives the clouds, then joins them together, then piles them up? Then you see the rain issuing from their midst. And He sends down from the sky, from mountains within it, hail; and He strikes with it whom He wills and turns it away from whom He wills. The flash of His lightning all but takes away the sight."

Root: ز-ج-و / ز-ج-ي. The sense the lexicographers record: to move a thing slowly, by pushing, by dragging it along. Izjāʾ — to drive gently and set moving.

And the fine point the word carries is this: the verb conveys not a forcible pushing but a gentle driving forward.

The Qurʾān uses the same root in two other places, and both bear out the sense:

The usage in Yūsuf gives the word's second sense: what is pushed along with difficulty, what is little and of small worth.

And the work of the usage in the verse is worth noting: the clouds are driven — they do not go of themselves, but neither are they flung.

I record this as an observation about the word.

The verse sets the forming of the cloud in order with three verbs, and the verbs are joined by thumma.

And the twofold use of the particle thumma conveys that there is time between the stages. The process is not instantaneous but by degrees.

أَلَّفَ — root أ-ل-ف: to knit together, to bring together and reconcile. Ulfa — cohesion, becoming used to. Alif — the name of the letter; and alf — a thousand. The lexicographers record at the centre of the root the idea of coming together and growing used to one another.

And that the word is used of human relations too is worth noting: the Qurʾān says allafa bayna qulūbihim (Āl ʿImrān 3/103; al-Anfāl 8/63). The same verb, for the joining both of clouds and of hearts.

I record this as an observation about the word.

رُكَام — root ر-ك-م. This root was analysed at al-Ṭūr, 52/44; I rely on that treatment. The note there: ر-ك-م: to pile one upon another. Rukām — a heap.

And the usage in al-Ṭūr is worth noting: there saḥābun markūm — "a cloud piled up" — occurred, and it was in the form of a passive participle. Here, however, rukām — in the verbal-noun form, and the second object of the verb yajʿaluhū.

The same root in both places, of a cloud. I record this as an observation about the word order.

Root: و-د-ق. This word was taken up in the table of words for rain in al-Shūrā; I rely on that treatment. The note there:

وَدْق (wadq) | و-د-ق | The grains, the drops of the rain

And the table in the al-Shūrā section separated the words Arabic uses for rain:

And the choice of wadq agrees with the verse's way of looking: the verse tells of the rain not as an event but as a process — the driving, the joining, the piling, and then the coming out of the drops.

I record this as an observation about the word order.

مِنْ خِلَٰلِهِ — "from their midst". Khilāl — root خ-ل-ل: the gap between two things, an interval. Khalal — a gap, a breach. And khalīl (a friend) is from this root too — the connection the lexicographers draw: friendship is that nothing else comes in between two people.

This expression is the most disputed place in the verse in point of language, and several explanations are transmitted in the classical commentaries:

I impose no preference, and it is not binding.

And a note of method needs entering: no claim of "foretelling" modern meteorology is drawn from this verse. The rule of the method (Method) is plain: no hunting for scientific miracles.

What can be said is this, and it is not a small thing: the verse describes the forming of the rain as a process by stages, and by the particle thumma it conveys that there is time between the stages. This stands within the text itself and needs no translating into a modern model.

The same measure was recorded in the discussion of Nūḥ, 71/16, and what was said there holds here too: to make a text need defending afresh with every new scientific model does not increase its force.

سَنَا — root س-ن-و/س-ن-ي: a gleam, light. Sanā — the brightness of a thing.

بَرْق — root ب-ر-ق: lightning, a flash.

And the verb occurs for the third time in the sūra: yakādu.

In all three occurrences there is a matter of light, and all three approach a threshold:

• 35: the light comes close to being without fire.
• 40: the eye comes close to seeing nothing at all.
• 43: the light comes close to destroying sight.

And the third is worth recording, and I record it as my own reading: the sūra does not name light only as a good thing. An excess of it also prevents seeing.

In the sūra's weave of light, that is, there are three positions: the absence of light (40), the measure of light (35), and the excess of light (43). And the sūra's name is the middle one.

I record this reading as my own reading; the wording of the three verses stands in the text.