Sabaʾ 34:1-2

Al-ḥamdu lillāhi'lladhī lahū mā fi's-samāwāti wa mā fi'l-arḍi wa lahu'l-ḥamdu fi'l-ākhirati wa huwa'l-ḥakīmu'l-khabīr · Yaʿlamu mā yaliju fi'l-arḍi wa mā yakhruju minhā wa mā yanzilu mina's-samāʾi wa mā yaʿruju fīhā wa huwa'r-raḥīmu'l-ghafūr

"Praise belongs to God, whose is whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth; and in the hereafter too the praise is His. He is wise, aware of all things. He knows what goes into the earth and what comes out of it, what descends from the sky and what ascends into it. He is the merciful, the forgiving."

The sentence says lahu'l-ḥamd twice, and sets a difference of time between the two:

The ground of the first praise is given plainly in the verse: whatever is in the heavens and in the earth is His. The second praise is left without a ground.

I record this as my own reading, and its support is the difference in how the two clauses are built: in this world a cause for praise is shown, because in this world who owns what is a matter of dispute — the twenty-second verse of the sūra will dispute exactly that. In the hereafter the dispute will be over, so no ground is needed.

And that praise continues in the hereafter is worth recording: the verse sets praise not as a behaviour belonging to this world but as a state valid in both worlds at once. At Fāṭir 35/34 it was treated that the first words out of the mouths of the people of the Garden are a sentence of praise (al-ḥamdu lillāhi'lladhī adhhaba ʿanna'l-ḥazan) — read together, the record made in this first verse appears there as something actually carried out.

The two verses end with two pairs of names, and the pairs are not symmetrical:

What is worth recording is this: the second verse describes an all-embracing knowledge (what goes in, what comes out, what descends, what ascends) — and after such a description of knowledge the expected closing would have been "ʿalīm" or "ḥafīẓ". In their place the verse sets the names of mercy and pardon.

I give this as an observation about the word order: the attribute named after knowing everything is not punishment but forgiveness. The completeness of the knowledge is attached not as a threat but as an assurance.

The middle of the second verse is a table built on four verbs:

Four verbs, two domains, and in each domain one going and one coming. The sentence thus leaves no direction uncovered: what enters the earth, what comes out of the earth, what comes down from the sky and what climbs into the sky all fall within the same knowledge.

و-ل-ج — the concrete sense of the root is to go inside through a narrow place. The lexicographers describe wallaja as "one thing's entering into another"; īlāj — to insert. The same root is used in the Qurʾān for the folding of night into day (yūliju'l-layla fi'n-nahār). The picture in the word is not disappearing — it is passing into a place that cannot be seen.

The root ع-ر-ج was analysed in detail at al-Maʿārij 70/3-4 (to ascend, to climb step by step along a sloping road; miʿrāj, maʿārij, aʿraj). I do not repeat it here.

There is one difference that belongs here and must be recorded: in al-Maʿārij the root was used of the angels and the Spirit (taʿruju'l-malāʾikatu wa'r-rūḥu ilayh) — that is, what ascended was specified. Here no subject is specified: mā yaʿruju fīhā — "whatever ascends into it". The word has been widened by being left indefinite.

And this table of four verbs prepares from the outset the claim the sūra will make later: the clause lā yaʿzubu ʿanhu mithqālu dharra, which comes in the third verse, is these four directions pressed into a single sentence.