al-Shūrā 42:17

Allāhu'lladhī anzala'l-kitāba bi'l-ḥaqqi wa'l-mīzān; wa mā yudrīka laʿalla's-sāʿata qarīb

"It is God who sent down the Book with the truth, and the balance. And how do you know? Perhaps the Hour is near."

This pair occurs in two places in the Qurʾān, and in both with the same verb (anzala):

This triad was treated in detail in al-Ḥadīd at 57/25. The table there was: kitāb the principle of the measure, mīzān the instrument of the measure, ḥadīd the protection of the measure. And this was recorded there:

"The connection is that the measure has been given. If the balance were an instrument on which people agreed among themselves, the stronger party who broke the agreement would always come out right. By counting the mīzān among the things sent down, the verse places the measure outside the parties."

And the analysis of the word mīzān is there as well: root و-ز-ن, a noun of instrument on the pattern mifʿāl — an instrument for weighing. I do not repeat it.

What belongs here is the difference between the two verses, and it arises from their contexts:

Al-Ḥadīd is a sūra about society — property, dominion, inheritance, debt, weapons. There the mīzān is tied to the establishing of justice: li-yaqūma'n-nāsu bi'l-qisṭ.

Al-Shūrā, however, is a sūra about division. And here what comes after the mīzān is not justice but time: laʿalla's-sāʿata qarīb.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the continuations of the two verses: the word for measure does the same work in both sūras — setting up an arbiter outside the parties. But al-Ḥadīd ties that arbiter to the present, al-Shūrā to the end. And al-Shūrā's context requires this: the fifteenth verse had closed the argument and referred the matter to the yawmu'l-jamʿ. The seventeenth says that the measure of that referral has also been sent down.

A note on the arrangement: whether the qualification bi'l-ḥaqq attaches to kitāb alone or to both has been debated among the grammarians. The wording allows both; I impose no preference.

The root was treated in al-Balad, al-Qāriʿa and al-Humaza. The note there: dirāya is knowing a thing by effort, by following a trail; this is what distinguishes it from ʿilm — the verb darā carries the sense "he came to know by investigating".

And in the Qurʾān there are two distinct patterns built on this root, and they do opposite work:

This distinction is recorded in the classical sources and can be verified from the text: the perfect pattern gives information, the imperfect pattern leaves the information closed.

And here the imperfect pattern is used. The sentence, that is, is framed not in order to give a piece of information but to state that the information is not given.

The same root comes once more at the end of the sūra, and this was recorded in the section on its structure:

Both sentences draw a limit; but their directions are opposite. In the seventeenth the limit still stands; in the fifty-second the moment at which the limit was crossed is recounted. This will be treated in detail at verse 52.

Al-sāʿa is a feminine noun; qarīb here comes masculine. One would expect qarība.

The grammarians explain this in several ways:

All three explanations are transmitted in the classical grammar books; I impose no preference. What is to be recorded is that this is a known and much-discussed usage — not a breach of rule.