Ṣād 38:45-47

Wa'dhkur ʿibādanā Ibrāhīma wa Isḥāqa wa Yaʿqūba uli'l-aydī wa'l-abṣār · Innā akhlaṣnāhum bi-khāliṣatin dhikra'd-dār · Wa innahum ʿindanā la-mina'l-muṣṭafayna'l-akhyār

"And remember our servants Abraham, Isaac and Jacob — those possessed of hands and eyes. We purified them with a pure thing — the remembrance of the abode. With Us they are among the chosen, the best."

The sūra passes from three accounts told one by one to a list of names. And the transition must be recorded:

I record this as my own reading: the sūra drops the detail and quickens. And in doing so it announces that those not recounted belong to the same class. The matter, that is, is not the accounts themselves but the attribute the accounts display.

And ʿibādanā is plural — in the three previous places it was singular (ʿabdanā). This is a change of pattern that can be verified.

And this construct is one of the densest expressions in the sūra.

أَيْدِى — its singular yad: hand. Root ي-د-ي.

And it must not be confused with the dha'l-ayd of the seventeenth verse. It was tabulated above: there the root is أ-ي-د (strength), here ي-د-ي (hand). The difference is visible in the writing: here there is a yāʾ at the end.

أَبْصَار — its singular baṣar: sight, the eye. Root ب-ص-ر. It was treated in Qāf at 50/22 and in al-Mulk.

And the construct is figurative; the exegetes agree on this:

Some exegetes have read aydī here too as "strength" (the root أ-ي-د). The two readings meet in sense; I do not impose a preference.

Now I come to the work of the construct, and I record it as my own reading.

The naming of the two together sets up a completion:

The construct gives the presence of the two together as the quality of a class.

And this can be linked with the polemic at the beginning of the sūra, and the link is one I make: in the objections between the fourth and eighth verses there was neither hand nor eye. To be astonished, to insinuate, to say "we have not heard" — none of these is either a work or a seeing. The forty-fifth verse offers the other side a measure: by what is a person named?

And these two limbs will meet us once more in the sūra — this time in the opposite direction:

Three occurrences, in three different places, and all three around the same two limbs. I record this as an observation about a pattern.

خَلَصَ — root خ-ل-ص. Its concrete sense: a thing's being separated from other things and becoming pure. Khāliṣ — that which has no admixture; the lexicographers use the word of milk and of butter: separated from its dregs, clear.

And the verb is in Form IV: akhlaṣa — he purified, he made pure.

In the sentence the verbal noun and the verb come together: akhlaṣnāhum bi-khāliṣa — emphasis.

And what the khāliṣa is, is said at once: dhikra'd-dār.

A variant reading is transmitted: when bi-khāliṣatin is read with tanwīn, dhikra'd-dār becomes its explanation; when it is read as a construct (bi-khāliṣati dhikra'd-dār), the sense "the purity of remembering the abode" comes out. The difference of sense is not great; because I cannot state with certainty which of the imams of the readings held which preference, I give no names.

And the construct is short but dense.

ٱلدَّار — root د-و-ر: to turn, to revolve. Dār — an enclosed place, a house, an abode. The picture in the root is that a thing's surroundings are encircled.

And the word is definite: al-dār — "that abode". Which abode is not stated, but the construct al-dāru'l-ākhira (the abode of the hereafter) is settled in the Qurʾān and the majority of the exegetes understand that here.

The first view is widespread; I do not impose a preference.

And dhikrā — from the root ذ-ك-ر, the backbone word of the sūra. It was tabulated above: this is the sixth occurrence of the root.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the construction of the word: the content of the three prophets' having been "purified" is not a list of deeds but a remembering. In the verse, that is, the definition of purity is the continual keeping in mind of the place to be arrived at.

And this joins with the hand-and-eye pair of the forty-fifth verse: the hand does, the eye sees, and the remembrance sets the direction. The three together give how a person is described.

مُصْطَفَىٰ — root ص-ف-و: to be pure, to be clear. Form VIII: iṣṭafā — to pick out and select, to take the best of a thing. And the root is of the same family as khāliṣ: both have to do with purity.

In the forty-sixth verse akhlaṣnāhum, that is, and in the forty-seventh al-muṣṭafayn — the same idea said with two roots.

أَخْيَار — its singular khayr or khayyir. Root خ-ي-ر: that which is good, that which is chosen. And the original sense of the root is choice: ikhtiyār — to choose. What is "good", that is, is what is worth choosing.

Worth recording: three words — khāliṣ, muṣṭafā, akhyār — all three convey a work of choosing and sifting. Three separate roots, one picture.