al-Ṣāffāt 37:33-39

Fa-innahum yawmaʾidhin fi'l-ʿadhābi mushtarikūn · Innā kadhālika nafʿalu bi'l-mujrimīn · Innahum kānū idhā qīla lahum lā ilāha illa'llāhu yastakbirūn · Wa yaqūlūna a-innā la-tārikū ālihatinā li-shāʿirin majnūn · Bal jāʾa bi'l-ḥaqqi wa ṣaddaqa'l-mursalīn · Innakum la-dhāʾiqu'l-ʿadhābi'l-alīm · Wa mā tujzawna illā mā kuntum taʿmalūn

"That day they are partners in the punishment. Thus do We deal with the guilty. For when it was said to them 'there is no god but God' they would grow proud, and would say: 'Are we to leave our gods for a mad poet?' — No! He brought the truth and confirmed the messengers who were sent. — You will surely taste the painful punishment. And you are requited only for what you used to do."

Root ش-ر-ك, Form VIII: to be a partner. And the choice of the word is sharp.

The same root is the root of the word shirk — to set partners beside God. Here the sūra uses the same root for their punishment: those who set partners become partners in the punishment.

In Arabic rhetoric this is close to the method called mushākala (using the same word as the response). What is recorded is this: the act and its requital are chosen from the same root.

And its link with the thirty-second verse is plain: a moment before, the parties were throwing the guilt at one another. The verse closes the matter: there is no separating, there is partnership.

And this sentence is the reverse of the closing mould in the sūra's sequence of prophets.

The same skeleton of a mould — innā kadhālika + verb + bi/li + a group — is applied to two opposite groups. This is a fact countable from the text.

And the difference between the two verbs is worth noting:

• nafʿalu bi'l-mujrimīn — "we do to the guilty". The verb is faʿl (to do), the preposition bāʾ.
• najzi'l-muḥsinīn — "we requite those who do good". The verb is jazāʾ (to give a requital), directly transitive.

I record this as my own reading: the word jazāʾ announces an equivalence — a requital equal to what was done. Faʿl announces only the act. On the side of good, then, the language of reciprocity is used; on the side of guilt, the language of procedure. This is an observation about word choice.

Mujrim — root ج-ر-م. The lexicographers give the original picture of the root as "to pluck fruit from the branch / to cut": jarama'n-nakhla — he harvested the palm. From here the sense "to earn" and then "evil earning, guilt" arises. Jurm — a crime; mujrim — one who commits it.

The thirty-fifth verse gives the ground of the thirty-fourth: why it is done thus.

And the ground is the reaction they showed to a single sentence: lā ilāha illa'llāh.

Yastakbirūn — root ك-ب-ر, Form X. The work of the pattern: to see oneself as great, to give oneself airs of greatness. The root was treated in Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin) as the backbone of that sūra (al-kibr, yastakbirūn).

A point of word order: the sentence is built as innahum kānū … yastakbirūn — kāna + imperfect. In Arabic this announces a habit continuing in the past: not once, but every time.

And the conditional particle is idhā (whenever), not in (if). The difference between the two: idhā is used for what is certain to occur, in for what is possible. Not "when it was said to them", then, but "every time it was said to them".

Two accusations together: shāʿir and majnūn.

Shāʿir — root ش-ع-ر: to perceive finely, to sense. Shuʿūr — becoming aware; shiʿr — poetry. The link the lexicographers make: a poet is one who perceives what others do not and says it in measured speech. In the root of the word there is fineness and perception, not fabrication.

This accusation occurs in several places in the Qurʾān and was treated at al-Ḥāqqa 69/41 (wa mā huwa bi-qawli shāʿirin qalīlan mā tuʾminūn) and at al-Ṭūr 52/30 (am yaqūlūna shāʿirun natarabbaṣu bihi rayba'l-manūn). I rely on those treatments.

Majnūn — root ج-ن-ن: to cover, to hide. Jinn — the unseen; janīn — the covered one in the womb; janna — a garden covered with trees; majnūn — one whose reason is covered. The root was analysed in al-Jinn.

And the oddity of the two accusations coming together must be recorded — as my own reading: to be a shāʿir requires skill; to be majnūn announces the absence of skill. The two accusations refute one another. This pair of accusations occurs together in several places in the Qurʾān, and a similar pair was treated at al-Dhāriyāt 51/52 (sāḥirun aw majnūn).

A point of word order: li-shāʿirin — the preposition lām announces cause: "because of a poet". What is named, that is, is not what they would gain in return for leaving their gods but the person who leads them to leave them. The expression reduces the matter to an individual.

And ālihatinā — "our gods". In the fourth verse it had been said inna ilāhakum la-wāḥid — "your God is one". The same word, the same pronominal suffix, the opposite ruling. The sūra sets its own key word in their mouths. This is a textual datum.

Bal is again iḍrāb: it leaves the accusation and announces the truth.

And the answer is two sentences — and both are answers to the accusation:

The second answer is worth noting: what is shown as proof is not something new but continuity. "This man is not alone; he says the same thing as those before him." One who is mad is not consistent.

Al-mursalīn — root ر-س-ل. And this word will occur six times in the sūra: 37 (here), 123, 133, 139, 171, 181. The three introductory moulds in the sequence of prophets (Elijah, Lot, Jonah) use this word, and the sūra's closing with peace (181) uses the same word. This is a countable structural datum.

I record this as my own reading: that it is said in the thirty-seventh verse "he confirmed the messengers" announces in advance the sūra's later sequence of prophets. Who the confirmed messengers are will be enumerated one by one from the seventy-fifth verse. This link between the two blocks is not set up openly in the text; the sharing of the word is a textual datum.

And here there is iltifāt (a shift in the direction of address): in verses thirty-three to thirty-seven the third person (innahum, yaqūlūn); in the thirty-eighth the second person (innakum).

The same transition was treated at al-Wāqiʿa 56/51, and what was recorded there was this: the telling turns to the addressee at the point where it becomes most concrete. The same observation is at work here.

Dhāʾiqū — root ذ-و-ق: to taste. And in the thirty-first verse the same word had come from the mouth of the other side: innā la-dhāʾiqūn ("we too shall taste it"). The same word two verses apart, one about themselves and one about them. This is a textual datum.

The choice of the verb: to taste announces that the punishment is direct and personal. Not hearing or seeing; contact with the mouth.

The block closes with a sentence of measure: only the requital of what you did.

Tujzawn — root ج-ز-ي: to requite, to pay what is equal. In the thirty-fourth verse nafʿalu was used; here tujzawn. The block closes, that is, by passing from the language of "procedure" to the language of "requital".

The restriction set up with illā announces that there is no excess in the punishment. This is a measure repeated in the Qurʾān, and similar sentences were treated in the sections al-Jāthiya and al-Aḥqāf.

And the next verse will give the other face of this measure: illā ʿibāda'llāhi'l-mukhlaṣīn (40) — the exception. The punishment is exactly equivalent; but there is a group exempted from the equivalence.