Āl ʿImrān 3:33-34

Inna'llāha'ṣṭafā Ādama wa Nūḥan wa āla Ibrāhīma wa āla ʿImrāna ʿala'l-ʿālamīn · Dhurriyyatan baʿḍuhā min baʿḍ, wa'llāhu samīʿun ʿalīm

"God chose Adam (Ādam), Noah (Nūḥ), the family of Abraham (Ibrāhīm) and the family of ʿImrān above all beings · as one offspring, one from another. God is hearing, knowing."

The concrete sense of the root is worth recording: ص-ف-و — a thing's being clear, pure, free of sediment. Ṣafwa — the cleanest part of a thing; ṣafī — clear water.

Form VIII (iftiʿāl): iṣṭafā — to pick out and take the pure part of a thing. That is, there is a sifting inside the verb: choosing is taking the clear out of the mixed.

And the distribution of the verb within this sūra must be recorded — this is a fact verifiable from the text:

Four occurrences in two verses. And in the forty-second verse the verb is repeated twice in the same sentence — this is a concentration verifiable within the sūra, and it will be taken up separately there.

Āla ʿImrān — "the family of ʿImrān". The construct occurs only here in the sūra.

A note per the method (Method): the Qurʾān names ʿImrān in two other places — 3/35 (imraʾatu ʿImrān) and al-Taḥrīm 66/12 (Maryama'bnata ʿImrān). The Qurʾān gives no other information about this person. The genealogical material transmitted in the classical sources is not passed on in this commentary; the only thing the text gives is a name.

The construction must be recorded: "an offspring, one part of it from another."

The root ذ-ر-ر / ذ-ر-و — the lexicographers differ over the origin of the word; dhurriyya means progeny, generation. The root was treated at 13/23 in al-Raʿd and at 36/41 in Yāsīn.

And the work of the sentence is worth recording — I give this as my own reading: the verse counts four separate names and then binds them into a single chain. That is, the choosing is given not as four separate events but as one continuing line.

And this is connected with a later sentence of the sūra: at verse 68, inna awla'n-nāsi bi-Ibrāhīma la'lladhīna'ttabaʿūh — "the nearest of people to Abraham are those who followed him". That is, the sūra builds a chain of descent and then ties nearness in that chain to following. This is a weave verifiable from the text, and it will be taken up separately at verse 68.

وَٱللَّهُ سَمِيعٌ عَلِيمٌ — and the verse ends with the name of hearing. I record this as an observation about the word order: in the very next verse there will come an utterance spoken — a vow a woman turned over within herself and then put into words. The name prepares the scene.