Yāsīn 36:59-62

Wa'mtāzu'l-yawma ayyuha'l-mujrimūn · Alam aʿhad ilaykum yā banī Ādama al lā taʿbudu'sh-shayṭān? Innahū lakum ʿaduwwun mubīn · Wa ani'budūnī, hādhā ṣirāṭun mustaqīm · Wa laqad aḍalla minkum jibillan kathīran, a-fa-lam takūnū taʿqilūn

"'Stand apart today, you who are guilty! O children of Adam! Did I not lay a covenant upon you, that you should not serve Satan — he is a plain enemy to you — and that you should serve Me? This is a straight path. He has led astray a great multitude of you. Were you not reasoning at all?'"

The root: to separate two things from one another, to distinguish. Mayz — separating; tamyīz — the power of discrimination. Form VIII (imtiyāz): to become separate of oneself, to stand apart.

The choice of form is worth recording: it does not say umīzū (be separated — passive) or fāriqū. Imtāzū — a Form VIII imperative: separate yourselves.

The same root occurs in the Qurʾān in the context of sorting out: li-yamīza'llāhu'l-khabītha mina'ṭ-ṭayyib (al-Anfāl 8/37).

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the sense of the form: the command is not an act of separating but a command to separate oneself. And this has a placing within the sūra: in verses fifty-five to fifty-eight the people of the garden were recounted, and in the fifty-ninth the command to separate comes. The separation, that is, comes after the tables, not before them. The two groups are first described separately, and then they actually separate.

ٱلْمُجْرِمُون — root ج-ر-م. The core the lexicographers give: jarm — to pluck fruit from its branch, to cut off. From here jurm — cutting off and taking, taking what is not deserved; a crime. The picture in the word is a separating — and the verb of the command is likewise a separating. I record this as an observation.

The lexicographers dwell on the concrete sense of the root: ʿahd is to watch over a thing again and again, to keep coming back to it. Taʿahhada'sh-shayʾa — he kept watch over a thing continually and did not neglect it. Al-ʿAhd — the rain's coming again and again to a place.

From here comes the sense of a covenant: a thing that must be watched over continually. The root has occurred in al-Fatḥ and al-Maʿārij.

And this must be recorded: the verb is in the first person singular — alam aʿhad, "did I not lay a covenant?" This is the only place in the sūra where the speech is directly in the first person singular (and it continues at 61 with iʿbudūnī). This is a verifiable datum of word order.

My own reading: the closest address of the scene is here. Throughout the sūra the verbs were mostly in the "we" form (jaʿalnā, arsalnā, aḥyaynā, khalaqnā); at the moment of the reckoning the form passes to the singular.

All three are transmitted; I do not impose a preference.

A datum of word order that must be recorded: throughout the sūra the one addressed was qawm (6, 20, 26, 28), al-ʿibād (30), hum. Here the address becomes banī Ādam — the whole human line.

And after the sixty-ninth verse al-insān will come (77). Towards its last block, that is, the sūra widens the addressee three times: a people → the children of Adam → man. This is a countable progression.

This expression must be read carefully, because no one says that he prostrates to Satan.

ع-ب-د — the core of the root is submission and obedience. The lexicographers give the example ṭarīqun muʿabbad (a road levelled by being trodden underfoot): a road much trampled, much pressed down. In the root of service, then, there is "leaving oneself to the one opposite" — not the form of a rite.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the sense of the root: the verse ties service not to intention but to obedience. Whoever's call is followed is the one served — even if the person does not call it service.

And this reading is completed together with the seventy-fourth verse: there those who take up āliha (gods) will be spoken of, and it will be said that those gods cannot help. Together the two verses describe two different errors: in one the one followed is an enemy, in the other the one followed is powerless.

إِنَّهُۥ لَكُمْ عَدُوٌّ مُّبِين — the fourth of the sūra's six occurrences of mubīn. And it is worth recording: the enmity is not hidden but mubīn — plain. The verse, that is, does not disclose a secret; it recalls something known.

The covenant has two clauses, and both are joined with the particle an:

And the second clause ends with a sentence: hādhā ṣirāṭun mustaqīm.

A repetition inside the sūra — the sūra's second occurrence of صراط:

In the fourth verse ʿalā ṣirāṭin mustaqīm was said of the Prophet — a position. In the sixty-first verse hādhā ṣirāṭun mustaqīm is said — a definition.

This is a correspondence that can be verified from the text. My own reading: in the fourth verse the person standing upon the path was named; in the sixty-first the path itself is named. And the naming is done with a command: iʿbudūnī — "serve Me." The path, that is, is described not as a route but as a turning.

The demonstrative must be recorded: hādhā — "this here." It points to the command. The name of the path becomes the command itself.

The root: jabal — mountain. And from the same root:

• جِبِلَّة (jibilla) — make-up, nature, the original upon which a thing is created. Jabala'llāhu'l-khalqa — God shaped the creation.
• جِبِلّ (jibill) — a great multitude, a people heaped up in a mass.

The lexicographers make the connection thus: people heaped up in great numbers like a mountain. I transmit this relation as the lexicographers record it.

It is transmitted in the sources on the variant readings that the word is read with several different vowellings (jibillan, jubulan and the like). I do not go into the details; there is no difference in meaning.

The choice of word is worth recording: the verse does not say "many people", it says "a great heap". My own reading: the word announces that the straying was not one by one but in a mass — and this will return in the next block of the sūra: in the seventy-fifth verse jund (army) will be said of the gods that are taken up. Both words announce a crowd.

أَفَلَمْ تَكُونُوا۟ تَعْقِلُون — the first of the sūra's two questions about reason (the other at 68). Four questions were tabulated in the section on structure.

Word order: a-fa-lam takūnū taʿqilūn — "were you not reasoning", in the past and in the durative form (kāna + imperfect). The question, that is, looks not at a moment but at a lifetime.