Ṣād 38:17-20

Iṣbir ʿalā mā yaqūlūna wa'dhkur ʿabdanā Dāwūda dha'l-ayd, innahū awwāb · Innā sakhkharna'l-jibāla maʿahū yusabbiḥna bi'l-ʿashiyyi wa'l-ishrāq · Wa'ṭ-ṭayra maḥshūra, kullun lahū awwāb · Wa shadadnā mulkahū wa ātaynāhu'l-ḥikmata wa faṣla'l-khiṭāb

"Endure what they say, and remember our servant David, possessor of strength; he was one who turned back often. We made the mountains subservient with him: they gave praise at evening and at the rising of the sun. And the birds, gathered — all of them turning back to him. We made his kingdom firm, and gave him wisdom and the parting of speech."

It was tabulated above; here I complete it. In the sixth verse the leading men of Mecca had said to their own body wa'ṣbirū ʿalā ālihatikum. Here the same root, the same preposition, a different object: iṣbir ʿalā mā yaqūlūn.

And the difference in the object is worth recording as my own reading:

The same command occurred in the same wording in Qāf at 50/39: fa'ṣbir ʿalā mā yaqūlūn. The two sūras give the same command to the envoy in the same words. This is a repetition that can be verified.

And now the longest section of the sūra begins. Its structure rests on repetition:

The same command four times. And Solomon is not on this list — because he enters in the thirtieth verse as something given to David (wa wahabnā li-Dāwūda Sulaymān), and not by a separate command.

And the verb is from the backbone root of the sūra: ذ-ك-ر. As was tabulated above, the word occurs eight times in the sūra. In the first verse the Qurʾān was named dhi'dh-dhikr; here a command from the same root arrives; and in the forty-ninth verse the whole of what has been recounted will be named hādhā dhikr.

The sūra, that is, names its own section of accounts with its own opening epithet. This is a frame that can be verified.

This construct occurs four times in the sūra (17, 30 niʿma'l-ʿabd, 41, 44 niʿma'l-ʿabd) and appears once more in the eighty-third verse in the mouth of Iblīs: ʿibādaka minhumu'l-mukhlaṣīn.

What is to be recorded is this: in this sūra the prophets are first named servant, and only then is it said what was given to them. The order is the same each time:

I record this as my own reading: in the middle of a polemic — ten verses after the question "why was he chosen?" — the sūra defines prophethood as a servanthood. The other side saw an office; the text says a duty.

أَيْد — root أ-ي-د: power, strength, support. Ayyada — he supported, he strengthened; taʾyīd — support.

This word was treated in detail in al-Dhāriyāt at 51/47, and Ṣād 38/17 was used there as the decisive indication. The finding there was this:

"Ṣād 38/17 is a decisive indication, because there the word occurs without tanwīn and in a construct (dha'l-ayd), so there is no possibility of its being the plural of yad (hand) — it is plainly in the sense of 'strength'."

I rely on that and do not repeat it here.

What is to be added here is the word's relative within this sūra. In the forty-fifth verse this will come: uli'l-aydī wa'l-abṣār — "those possessed of hands and eyes". There the word is the plural of yad (hand), and I shall treat it in its own place. The two constructs look alike; they are not:

The difference between the two is visible in the writing: in verse 45 there is a yāʾ at the end (ٱلْأَيْدِى), in verse 17 there is not (ٱلْأَيْد).

The root أ-و-ب was treated in Qāf at 50/32. The note there: "Awwāb is on the faʿʿāl pattern: one who returns often… the word conveys not a single act of returning but the having made returning a habit." I rely on that.

What is particular to Ṣād is the frequency of the word: three times for three prophets (17 David, 30 Solomon, 44 Job), and once more in the nineteenth verse.

And as was recorded in al-Ghāshiya, in Qāf 50/32 the same epithet occurs as a general attribute: li-kulli awwābin ḥafīẓ. The epithet given to three prophets in Ṣād, that is, opens out to everyone in Qāf.

I record this as my own reading: all three prophets are named with the same single epithet. And the epithet has nothing to do with the kingdom, the strength or the patience given to them; it has to do with turning back. The sūra, that is, shows as the common point of three separate lives not what was obtained but the place that is returned to.

سَخَّرَ — root س-خ-ر. And the root has two branches; they were treated in al-Jāthiya and al-Zukhruf:

The common point of the two branches, as the lexicographers record it, is the putting of a thing to a task against its own will.

And both branches occur in this sūra: here sakhkharnā (taskhīr, 18 and 36), and in the sixty-third verse ittakhadhnāhum sukhriyyā (mockery). The same root, the one a favour and the other a fault.

سَبَّحَ — root س-ب-ح. Its concrete sense: to move swiftly and without hindrance through water or air. Sabaḥa — he swam. And tasbīḥ is to hold God far from all deficiency — its link with the picture of "unhindered passage" in the root: a thing's passing away from what does not befit it.

On the question of the praise of the mountains and the birds two attitudes are transmitted in the classical commentaries:

The two do not exclude one another and I do not impose a preference. The verse al-Isrāʾ 17/44 supports the first view from the text; while the verse's note here, maʿahū ("together with him"), may be pointing to the second.

بِٱلْعَشِىِّ وَٱلْإِشْرَاقِ — two hours are named: late afternoon, and the hour of the sun's rising.

إِشْرَاق — root ش-ر-ق: to rise, to shine. Sharq — the direction in which the sun rises. The verbal noun of Form IV: the sun's climbing and the spreading of its light — that is, the moment just after sunrise, when the light covers everything.

A similar pair was treated in Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin) at 40/55: bi'l-ʿashiyyi wa'l-ibkār — late afternoon and early morning. And the note there holds here too: "By naming the two extreme hours, what lies between them is taken in."

The two sūras use the same word (al-ʿashiyy), and the second word changes:

And the word al-ʿashiyy will occur once more in this sūra, at the thirty-first verse — this time as the hour at which Solomon's horses were brought before him. The same hour, two prophets, two separate scenes: in the one, praise; in the other, a delay. I record this as an observation; I shall come back to it below in its place.

مَحْشُورَة — root ح-ش-ر: to gather together, to drive and heap in one place. In the Qurʾān the word is used most often of the gathering at the Resurrection (ḥashr).

Here it is a passive participle: gathered, brought together. The birds come not of themselves but as things gathered.

كُلٌّ لَّهُۥٓ أَوَّابٌ — "all of them turning back to him."

To whom does the pronoun (lahū) refer? The exegetes differ:

I do not impose a preference. The second view rests on the picture of "coming back" in the root sense of the word: an echo answering a sound is also a kind of return.

شَدَّ — root ش-د-د: to bind a thing tightly, to draw it taut, to make it firm. Shadīd — firm, severe. Its concrete sense is the tightening of a knot.

And the object of the verb is mulk. What is given, that is, is not the kingdom itself — the kingdom was already there; what is given is the firmness of the kingdom.

Worth recording: in the eleventh verse the other side had been named mahzūm (caved in) — and the picture of the root ه-ز-م was the collapse of something emptied inside. Here the exact opposite: shadadnā — we drew tight, we made firm. The two roots are contraries of one another: the one, slackening and collapse; the other, tautening and holding.

I record this as an observation; the sūra does not itself stress the contrast.

And now we come to one of the most important terms in the sūra.

فَصْل — root ف-ص-ل. The root was treated in Fuṣṣilat at 41/3, and what was recorded there was this: "The concrete sense of the root: to separate two things from one another, to set a distance between them." I rely on that and do not repeat the analysis of the root.

In Fuṣṣilat the word was in Form II (tafṣīl — to separate a whole into its parts, to set out in detail). Here the verbal noun comes in its bare form: faṣl — to separate.

خِطَاب — root خ-ط-ب: to speak turning towards someone. Khuṭba — an address directed at a gathering; khiṭāb — speech directed at the one addressed. There is a turning at the root of the word: speech is aimed at a target.

Now the construct: faṣlu'l-khiṭāb — "the parting of speech". And the exegetes explain it in several ways:

The first view is the one most in accord with the sūra's own movement, and its ground is in the text: the next verse (21) opens a scene of litigation, and the twenty-sixth verse explicitly contains the command to judge (fa'ḥkum bayna'n-nāsi bi'l-ḥaqq). But this is an observation and not a preference; the other explanations are transmitted as well, and they do not exclude one another.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the concrete sense of the root: faṣl is to separate two things. Giving judgment is named in the verse not as an exercise of power but as an act of separating. The judge separates what has been mixed. And this is exactly what will not be possible to do in the next scene — David will judge having heard only one of two speeches; that is, without having taken one of the two things he is to separate into his hand.

And the word khiṭāb inside the construct will return in the twenty-third verse: the litigant will say wa ʿazzanī fi'l-khiṭāb — "he overbore me in speech."

Two words, three verses apart and from the same root. To the one has been given the capacity to part speech; the other complains of being overborne in speech. This is a verbal link that can be verified, and it plays a part in the setting of the scene.