Yāsīn 36:66-67

Wa law nashāʾu la-ṭamasnā ʿalā aʿyunihim fa'stabaqu'ṣ-ṣirāṭa fa-annā yubṣirūn · Wa law nashāʾu la-masakhnāhum ʿalā makānatihim fa-ma'staṭāʿū muḍiyyan wa lā yarjiʿūn

"Had We willed, We would have wiped out their eyes; they would race along the path, but how would they see? Had We willed, We would have transformed them where they stand; they could go neither forward nor back."

A point of word order, and it establishes a very important caveat within the sūra.

Both verses begin with law. In Arabic law differs from in: in is for a condition whose fulfilment is possible; law is for a condition unfulfilled, impossible, or not carried out (ḥarf imtināʿ li-imtināʿ). The lexicographers record this distinction.

Both verses, that is, recount something that was not done: the eyes were not wiped out, the forms were not changed.

And now comes one of the most important contrasts within the sūra. The table below can be verified entirely from the text:

The same root is used in both places: ب-ص-ر — sight. This is a verifiable repetition.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the difference of verb form between the two places:

Verses eight and nine were describing a state. Verses sixty-six and sixty-seven say that the physical counterpart of that state was not carried out: the organ of sight was not annulled, the capacity to move was not taken away — and these are named separately and with the qualification "had We willed".

The sūra, that is, sets a limit internal to the text on how its own first description is to be understood. The ring in the eighth verse is not an iron ring; the barrier in the ninth is not a stone wall. We know this because the sūra recounts the real physical annulment separately and as something that did not happen.

And this reading agrees with the forty-fifth verse too: there they were being asked to guard against those same two directions (mā bayna aydīkum wa mā khalfakum). For the direction said to be closed a command is still being given. A command presupposes that it can be carried out.

Reading the three places together is the ground of this reading, and all three are countable textual data: 8-9 (the description), 45 (the command), 66-67 (what was not done).

The concrete sense of the root: to wipe out the trace of a thing, to level its surface and make it indistinct. Ṭamasa'l-athar — he wiped out the track; ṭamasa'l-kitāb — he blotted out the writing, made it illegible.

The ṭams of an eye: the levelling of the place of the eye, so that no socket and no shape remain.

The root occurs elsewhere in the Qurʾān too: min qabli an naṭmisa wujūhan (al-Nisāʾ 4/47), rabbana'ṭmis ʿalā amwālihim (Yūnus 10/88).

The picture in the word is worth recording: not to blind, but to wipe out. The organ is not damaged — its place is not left.

س-ب-ق — the root: to get ahead, to race. Form VIII (istibāq): to race, to try to arrive before one another.

And this is the sūra's third and last occurrence of صراط:

All three occurrences can be verified. My own reading: in the third occurrence the path is standing where it was and is being raced along. What is missing is not in the path but in the one looking. And the question at the end of the sentence says this: fa-annā yubṣirūn — "how would they see?"

Word order: annā — a particle asking manner and place; here it is a question conveying denial: no answer is expected, an impossibility is announced.

The sense of the root: to take a thing out of its own form and put it into another, to deform it.

And the second branch of the root must be recorded: masīkh — food that is insipid, that has lost its savour. The lexicographers make the connection thus: a thing's losing the quality proper to it. I transmit this relation as the lexicographers record it.

عَلَىٰ مَكَانَتِهِمْ — root م-ك-ن: place, position, capacity. Makāna — the place and the condition one is in. The change, that is, was to have happened on the spot — with no time even to flee, to go, to prepare.

مُضِيًّا — root م-ض-ي: to pass on, to advance, to keep going. A verbal noun.

And the sentence closes two directions at once: fa-ma'staṭāʿū muḍiyyan wa lā yarjiʿūn — neither forward nor back.

This is the same as the structure in verses forty-nine and fifty, and it can be verified:

In both verses the same second verb: yarjiʿūn. My own reading: the sūra closes the same pair in two separate scenes — once for those seized all at once, once as a supposition. And in both, what closes is "afterwards".

The fourth occurrence of the root ر-ج-ع in the sūra, and the closing of block VI. A table of the five occurrences was given in the section on structure.