إِنَّ فِى ذَٰلِكَ لَءَايَةً ۖ وَمَا كَانَ أَكْثَرُهُم مُّؤْمِنِينَ · وَإِنَّ رَبَّكَ لَهُوَ ٱلْعَزِيزُ ٱلرَّحِيمُ
"In this there is surely a sign; but most of them were not believers. · And your Lord — He indeed — is the Mighty, the Merciful."
The seal that will occur eight times in the sūra occurs here for the first time — and here it does not yet close an account. What it closes is a proof: the plant of the seventh verse.
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is position: in the sūra the seal comes first after a proof from nature; in the seven occurrences that follow it will come after a proof from history. The sūra thus applies the same judgement to two different kinds of proof: "in this there is a sign, most did not believe" — for the plant as well as for the seven peoples.
One — mā kāna is in the perfect. The imperfect (wa mā aktharuhum muʾminīn) could also have been said; and indeed the Qurʾān says it so elsewhere (Hūd 11/17 — fa-lā taku fī miryatin minh; Yūsuf 12/103 — wa mā aktharu'n-nāsi wa law ḥaraṣta bi-muʾminīn). Here the perfect has been chosen: "were not believers." This accords with the accounts to be recounted in the seven occurrences that follow — there it will really be the past that is spoken of.
Two — that akthar (most) is said is that kull (all) is not said. The seal is repeated eight times, and in all eight it says "most". That a minority believed in every account is thus hidden in the sentence itself. In the account of Noah this minority also appears in the text (wa man maʿiya mina'l-muʾminīn, 118); in the account of Lot, his household (170); in the account of Ṣāliḥ it does not appear.
I record this as an observation about the structure: the sentence does not announce despair. What it announces is a proportion.
Both names have been analysed across the series and are not repeated: for ʿazīz, Fāṭir and al-Ḥashr; for raḥīm, al-Raḥmān and al-Fātiḥa.
In summary: the core of the root ع-ز-ز is hardness, resistance to wear — arḍun ʿazāz, hard ground. The ʿazīz is the one who cannot be reached, cannot be overcome, cannot be broken. The core of the root ر-ح-م is the womb — the closeness that protects and raises.
What is to be added here is their coming together. This pair occurs in about thirteen places in the Qurʾān, and the eight occurrences in al-Shuʿarāʾ make up the greater part of that. The instances outside the sūra: Yā Sīn 36/5 (tanzīla'l-ʿazīzi'r-raḥīm), al-Rūm 30/5, al-Sajda 32/6, al-Dukhān 44/42.
| Name | What it looks toward | Its counterpart in the sūra |
|---|---|---|
| al-ʿAzīz | Irresistibility | The end of the seven peoples — those destroyed |
| al-Raḥīm | Protecting and watching over | The end of the seven prophets — those saved |
The second verse of the seal thus gives both faces at once of the judgement "most did not believe" in the first verse. And this explains why the sūra closes every account with two verses: one verse states the fact, the other the measure.
And the pronoun is worth recording: la-huwa. Wa inna rabbaka la-huwa al-ʿazīzu'r-raḥīm — there is a separating pronoun (ḍamīr al-faṣl) between them. In Arabic this pronoun announces restriction (ḥaṣr) and emphasis: "the truly Mighty and Merciful is He." The same construction does not occur at the beginning of the sūra, nor at its end — only in this seal, eight times.