al-Shūrā 42:12

Lahu maqālīdu's-samāwāti wa'l-arḍ; yabsuṭu'r-rizqa li-man yashāʾu wa yaqdir; innahu bi-kulli shayʾin ʿalīm

"To Him belong the keys of the heavens and the earth. He spreads out provision for whom He wills, and He restricts it. He knows everything."

There is disagreement over the singular and the origin of the word, and I record it plainly.

On the sense, however, there is little difference: "keys" or "treasuries". The two are bound together; a key is the means of reaching a treasury.

The construction occurs twice in the Qurʾān: here and in al-Zumar 39/63 (lahu maqālīdu's-samāwāti wa'l-arḍ). In the same wording, in two places.

The sentence sets two opposite verbs side by side, and the agent of both is the same.

بَسَطَ — root ب-س-ط. It was treated in Nūḥ; the note there was this: to spread, to lay out, to open, to widen; bisāṭ — a rug spread on the ground; basīṭ — spread out, simple; and its opposite qabḍ (to gather in).

قَدَرَ — root ق-د-ر. It was treated in detail in al-Qadr in its three senses, and that threefold table was used again in al-Qamar. The table there was: measure/determining, worth/honour, narrowness/fullness. The verb yaqdir is here in the third sense: to narrow, to restrict the measure.

And these two senses of the root — to measure and to narrow — are bound to one another: to measure a thing is to set a limit to it, and setting a limit is narrowing. This link was already made in al-Qadr.

Now this verse must be read together with the twenty-seventh, because both use the same two roots:

This is a fact that can be verified from the text: the same two roots, fifteen verses apart, answering two different questions. The twelfth verse answers "how much to whom", the twenty-seventh "why not without limit".

I record this distinction separately because confusing the two yields a false conclusion: the twelfth verse is not explaining one person's straitness, it is saying that the distribution is from a single hand. It will be treated in detail at verse 27.

The eleventh verse framed a negation with the word shayʾ: laysa ka-mithlihi shayʾ.

The twelfth frames an affirmation with the same word: bi-kulli shayʾin ʿalīm.

The same word, two verses apart, one leaving nothing in and the other leaving nothing out.

I record this as an observation; I do not claim that it is a deliberate choice. What I record is what can be verified: in both verses the word works as a word of scope, once in negation and once in affirmation.