Sabaʾ 34:40-42

Wa yawma yaḥshuruhum jamīʿan thumma yaqūlu li'l-malāʾikati a-hāʾulāʾi iyyākum kānū yaʿbudūn · Qālū subḥānaka anta waliyyunā min dūnihim, bal kānū yaʿbudūna'l-jinna aktharuhum bihim muʾminūn · Fa'l-yawma lā yamliku baʿḍukum li-baʿḍin nafʿan wa lā ḍarrā, wa naqūlu li'lladhīna ẓalamū dhūqū ʿadhāba'n-nāri'llatī kuntum bihā tukadhdhibūn

"On the day He gathers them all together, then says to the angels: 'Was it you these were serving?' They will say: 'Glory be to You! Our protector is You, not they. No, they were serving the jinn; most of them had faith in them.' Today you can do one another neither good nor harm. And We shall say to those who wronged: 'Taste the punishment of the Fire you used to deny.'"

The question is not put to those who were served — it is put to the angels. And this ties back to the twenty-second verse of the sūra: there it was said alladhīna zaʿamtum (those you have alleged), and their identity was left open. Here an identity is named.

The word order of the question must be recorded: a-hāʾulāʾi iyyākum kānū yaʿbudūn.

Iyyākum is the object, and it has been placed before the verb. In Arabic this fronting conveys restriction (ḥaṣr): "was it you who were served?" The stress falls not on the verb but on the object.

I give this as an observation about the word order: the question is not "were these people serving?" — the serving had already taken place. What is asked is who was served.

The second part is worth recording, and I give this as my own reading; its support is the phrase min dūnihim: the angels do not say "we did not want to be served". What they say is their own position: "our walī is You, not they." That is, the answer is given not by denying the charge but by declaring where their own allegiance lies.

At Fāṭir 35/14 the same line was treated: wa yawma'l-qiyāmati yakfurūna bi-shirkikum — on the day of resurrection they will disown your associating. And at al-Aḥqāf 46/5-6 the note was set down that the relation was never established at all. I rely on those treatments.

بَلْ كَانُوا۟ يَعْبُدُونَ ٱلْجِنَّ — and the correction comes: the one really followed was another.

The limit set by the method (Method) concerning the jinn holds here too: I rely on the measure laid down at al-Jinn — no description is produced beyond what the text states. What the verse says is this: the direction of the attachment was not where the one who served supposed it to be.

And the clause aktharuhum bihim muʾminūn must be recorded: "most of them had faith in them". The verb is the verb of īmān — and here it is used not in a positive sense but in the sense of attachment. That is, the word states a trust whose direction is not specified.

I record this as an observation about the language: the verse makes an issue not of believing itself but of what is believed in. And that is what the sūra had been disputing all the way to the thirty-eighth verse.

And the verb ملك (to own) comes for the second time in the sūra.

The ruling stated in this world in the twenty-second verse is seen in fact on that day in the forty-second. This is a repetition that can be verified within the sūra, and I record it as my own reading: the sūra first gives something as a statement and then shows it as a scene.

And the phrase baʿḍukum li-baʿḍ must be recorded: reciprocity. The same phrase was there in the thirty-first verse: yarjiʿu baʿḍuhum ilā baʿḍin al-qawl. The same two parties, there exchanging speech, here reckoning benefit and harm.

ذُوقُوا۟ — "taste". The root ذ-و-ق is widespread in the Qurʾān for the tasting of punishment, and it occurred in the twelfth verse too: nudhiqhu min ʿadhābi's-saʿīr. Both occurrences are in the same sūra.