Ṣād 38:25-26

Fa-ghafarnā lahū dhālik, wa inna lahū ʿindanā la-zulfā wa ḥusna maʾāb · Yā Dāwūdu innā jaʿalnāka khalīfatan fi'l-arḍi fa'ḥkum bayna'n-nāsi bi'l-ḥaqqi wa lā tattabiʿi'l-hawā fa-yuḍillaka ʿan sabīli'llāh, inna'lladhīna yaḍillūna ʿan sabīli'llāhi lahum ʿadhābun shadīdun bimā nasū yawma'l-ḥisāb

"We forgave him that. With Us he has a nearness and a good place of return. 'O David! We have made you a viceroy on the earth; so judge between people with the truth, and do not follow desire — it will lead you astray from the way of God. Those who go astray from the way of God have a severe punishment, because they forgot the Day of Reckoning.'"

غَفَرَ — root غ-ف-ر. Its concrete sense was treated in Muḥammad and al-Muddaththir: to cover a thing over, to close it. Mighfar is from the same root — the helmet that covers the head.

And the object must be recorded: dhālika — "that", "that thing".

An indefinite demonstrative is used. What was forgiven is not named.

I record this plainly: the verse does not say what was forgiven. To manufacture a content where it has not spoken is a thing that will not be done in this commentary. As was written in the note on method above, reports that fill this gap are transmitted in the classical commentaries; that they are of Israelite provenance and that a considerable body of the exegetes rejected them is also transmitted. I do not go into the details.

What can be drawn from the text is this, and it is limited: in the twenty-fourth verse it was said that there was a fitna (a test), that David understood it, that he asked forgiveness and turned back. The twenty-fifth verse announces that what was asked for was given.

And the construction matters: fa-ghafarnā — joined with fāʾ. In Arabic fāʾ conveys consequence and following without delay. The forgiveness, that is, comes directly on the heels of the turning back.

Root ز-ل-ف. It was treated in al-Takwīr and this verse was named there: "Zulfa — nearness, rank. Zulfā — nearness: 'For him there is a nearness with Us' (Ṣād 38/25)." I rely on that.

The concrete sense of the root: to draw near, to step forward. Muzdalifa is from the same root — the place of drawing near.

And the construct: ʿindanā la-zulfā — "a nearness with Us".

مَـَٔاب — root أ-و-ب. From the same root as the awwāb of the seventeenth verse. A noun of place: the place one returns and arrives at.

As was tabulated above, the word maʾāb occurs four times in the sūra (25, 40, 49, 55) and two of them are word for word the same:

The twenty-fifth and the fortieth verses are identical word for word. This is a repetition that can be verified from the text, and it closes the two sections on the prophets with the same sentence.

And in the forty-ninth verse the same construct opens out to an unnamed group: al-muttaqīn. I record this as my own reading: the sūra then ties what was given to two prophets to an attribute. What is recounted, that is, does not remain the privilege of two men; it is turned into a measure that can be carried.

خَلِيفَة — root خ-ل-ف: to come after, to take the place of. The word was treated in detail in al-Baqara at 2/30. I rely on that and do not repeat it here.

The difference between the use here and the one in al-Baqara must be recorded, and it can be verified:

I record this as my own reading: in al-Baqara the viceroyalty is announced as a position; in Ṣād it is given as a description of a duty. And the duty is stated in a single sentence: fa'ḥkum bayna'n-nāsi bi'l-ḥaqq.

In this verse, that is, the viceroyalty is identified with the work of judging. This is consistent with the whole subject of the sūra.

And now we come to the central sentence of the sūra.

In the twenty-second verse the litigants had said fa'ḥkum baynanā bi'l-ḥaqq. In the twenty-sixth verse God says fa'ḥkum bayna'n-nāsi bi'l-ḥaqq.

The only difference between the two sentences is the widening of the field of those addressed:

This is a verbal widening that can be verified, and I rest my own reading on it: what is lived through in a single suit turns four verses later into a general principle. The sūra does not give the rule in the abstract; it first makes an event happen, and then states the rule.

بِٱلْحَقِّ — and the qualification. The qualification bi'l-ḥaqq was treated in detail in al-Jāthiya at 45/22 and al-Aḥqāf at 46/3. I rely on that. What was recorded there was this: that the creation is bi'l-ḥaqq is a qualification placed on the creating itself — not a quality added afterwards.

The same qualification is placed here on judgment. And in the next verse (27) the opposite of the same word will come: bāṭilā.

Within three verses, that is, the same measure is used in two fields:

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the adjacency of the two verses: the sūra names the measure of the judgment a man gives and the measure on which the universe is built with the same word. Judgment is required to be with ḥaqq, because creation is not with bāṭil.

هَوَىٰ — root ه-و-ي. It was treated in al-Jāthiya at 45/23, and the two branches of the root were given there on the basis of al-Najm: to fall downward; and desire, inclination. I rely on that and do not repeat it here.

The finding in the discussion of al-Jāthiya was this, and it connects here directly: there the man "who takes his hawā as his god" is described, and this was explained as "determining what to choose as a god according to one's own desire".

And in al-Nāziʿāt and al-Najm this verse (Ṣād 38/26) was explicitly named: "Do not follow hawā; it will lead you astray from the way of God."

What is to be added here is the construction of the sentence, and it is fine.

The verse does not say "do not follow your desire". ٱلْهَوَىٰ — definite and unpossessed: "do not follow desire". There is no pronoun.

I record this as my own reading: the word has not been personalised. What is forbidden is not David's desire but the use of desire as a measure. This lifts the rule out of being peculiar to one person.

And fa-yuḍillaka — "it will then lead you astray". Joined with fāʾ: the straying is the consequence of following hawā, not a separate event.

ضَلَّ — root ض-ل-ل: to leave the road, to be lost. And that the verb is attributed here to hawā must be recorded: what leads astray is not the person himself but the thing he follows. That is, hawā is described as something that gives direction — something that can be followed, and something that takes one somewhere when it is followed.

Joined with the "falling downward" branch of the root, this yields the following as my own reading: hawā takes a person somewhere — but the direction it goes is downward. The two branches of the word (falling / desire) build one single picture in this sentence.

نَسِىَ — root ن-س-ي: to forget; and to abandon, to disregard. The Qurʾān uses the word mostly in the second sense — not dropping out of knowledge, but not being taken into account.

And the chain the sentence sets up must be recorded:

The verse gives this chain in the reverse order: it states the punishment first and then its cause (bimā nasū). At the end of the sentence, that is, stands the starting point.

And yawmu'l-ḥisāb had occurred in the sixteenth verse — there the mockers wanted that day brought forward. Here the same day is named as forgotten by those who go astray. It was tabulated above.

I record this as my own reading: the two postures look opposed but come out at the same place. To ask mockingly for a thing to come is also not to take it into account. The demand in the sixteenth verse is another form of the forgetting in the twenty-sixth.

The stretch from the twenty-first to the twenty-sixth verse is the most concrete part of the sūra, and it recounts a procedure of judgment.

Three things emerge from the text and are beyond dispute:

1. Judgment is bound to a measure: bi'l-ḥaqq. Not the judge's own conviction, but the truth itself. 2. What corrupts judgment is an inclination: ittibāʿu'l-hawā. Not a bribe or a pressure — the following of desire. The verse names the finest of the dangers: not a corrupter that comes from outside, but a leaning that comes from within. 3. And the ordering of verses twenty-three and twenty-four shows that giving judgment on one-sided knowledge is a matter of testing.

I record this as my own inference, and I give it not as a sermon but as an observation: what goes wrong in the account is not an ill intention. The judgment recounted is in all likelihood the right judgment — that a man with ninety-nine ewes should ask for the one is called ẓulm in the wording of the verse itself. What is tested is not the rightness of the outcome but the road by which it was reached.

And this distinction — between a right outcome and a right procedure — is not only a matter of adjudication. To settle on what one person has told you and decide, in any matter whatever, has the same structure. The sentence inna hādhā la-shayʾun yurād in the sixth verse of the sūra was built in exactly this way: the passage from a one-sided reading to a verdict.

This resemblance between the two scenes is a link I make; the sūra does not make it separately. But both are inside the same sūra, and what is missing in both is the same thing: the word of the other side.