Ṣād 38:65-66

Qul innamā ana mundhir, wa mā min ilāhin illa'llāhu'l-Wāḥidu'l-Qahhār · Rabbu's-samāwāti wa'l-arḍi wa mā baynahuma'l-ʿAzīzu'l-Ghaffār

"Say: I am only a warner. There is no god but God, the One, the All-Subduing. The Lord of the heavens and the earth and what is between them; the mighty, the ever-forgiving."

In the sixty-fifth verse the sūra turns to the envoy and gives a command: qul — "say".

And the command comes three times in the sūra: 65, 67, 86. All three carry a short sentence and all three announce a limit:

And now a link is made with the fourth verse of the sūra. There it had been said:

wa ʿajibū an jāʾahum mundhirun minhum — "they were astonished that a warner from among themselves had come to them."

The same word, sixty-one verses later, this time in the envoy's own mouth.

This is a chain of wording that can be verified, and I record it as my own reading: the other side had been astonished that a mundhir should come. The sūra gives that word back as the envoy's own definition of himself — and limits it with innamā ("only"): no more than this.

إِنَّمَا — in Arabic it is the particle of ḥaṣr (restriction): "only, nothing but". The sentence, that is, does not announce an office; it announces the limit of an office.

And a similar restriction was treated in Qāf at 50/45: wa mā anta ʿalayhim bi-jabbār — "you are not a tyrant over them." The note there was this: "Compulsion is taken out of the envoy's hand and something is given in its place: the text."

In Ṣād there is the same structure, but the order differs:

And the second link: in the fifth verse the other side had said a-jaʿala'l-ālihata ilāhan wāḥidā — "has he made the gods one single god?"

The sixty-fifth verse uses the same word: al-Wāḥid.

And the difference between the two sentences lies in the grammatical state of the word:

This is a difference of construction that can be verified, and I record it as my own reading: the other side had spoken of tawḥīd as an indefinite proposal; the verse gives it as a definite name. The answer, that is, does not defend the claim — it names it.

ٱلْقَهَّار — root ق-ه-ر: to prevail and subdue, to become such that one cannot be resisted. The pattern is faʿʿāl — intensive.

This name was named in al-Ikhlāṣ and al-Ḍuḥā and its occurrences in the Qurʾān were listed (Yūsuf 12/39; al-Raʿd 13/16; Ṣād 38/65; al-Zumar 39/4; Ghāfir 40/16). And it is striking: in almost every place the name occurs it comes together with al-Wāḥid.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is that pairing: the two names together set up an inference. Were there more than one, one would prevail over the other. To be Qahhār requires that there be no other above; and that requires being wāḥid. The two names complete one another.

The sixty-sixth verse gives a second pair of names, and both had occurred earlier in the sūra:

And setting the two pairs side by side, a balance is seen:

Al-ʿAzīz is fixed in both; the second name changes. And the two changing names are on the same pattern (faʿʿāl) and both convey a giving: the one of goods, the other of pardon.

I record this as an observation; its ground is the structure of the two constructs.

And it can be compared with the sequence of five attributes treated in Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin) at 40/3: there too power and mercy were given in one breath. The two sūras set up the same balance with different numbers of names.