تَكَادُ ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتُ يَتَفَطَّرْنَ مِن فَوْقِهِنَّ ۚ وَٱلْمَلَٰٓئِكَةُ يُسَبِّحُونَ بِحَمْدِ رَبِّهِمْ وَيَسْتَغْفِرُونَ لِمَن فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ ۗ أَلَآ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ هُوَ ٱلْغَفُورُ ٱلرَّحِيمُ
Takādu's-samāwātu yatafaṭṭarna min fawqihinna, wa'l-malāʾikatu yusabbiḥūna bi-ḥamdi rabbihim wa yastaghfirūna li-man fi'l-arḍ; alā inna'llāha huwa'l-ghafūru'r-raḥīm
"The heavens are almost split apart above them. And the angels glorify their Lord with praise and ask forgiveness for those on the earth. Know well that God is the Forgiving, the Merciful."
Kāda in Arabic is one of the verbs of approximation (afʿāl al-muqāraba): it conveys that an act has come very close to happening but has not happened.
And this is the most important word in the sentence. The verse does not say "the heavens split"; it says "they are on the point of splitting". What is described, that is, is not an event but a tension.
The concrete sense of the root: to split, to open lengthwise. The root was treated in the corpus in the sections al-Infiṭār and al-Inshiqāq; I do not repeat it. Its summary: faṭr is a thing's being split open; ifṭār (breaking a fast) and fiṭra (the first splitting, the first constitution) are from the same root.
| Verse | Word | Who / what |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | yatafaṭṭarna — on the point of splitting | The heavens |
| 11 | fāṭiru's-samāwāti wa'l-arḍ — the splitter, the first to split open | God |
The same root, six verses apart, in two opposite positions: what is split and who splits. This is a fact that can be verified from the text. I do not claim that it is a deliberate choice; what I record is that the root has been used at both ends within this sūra.
A note on the readings: in some readings the word is read yanfaṭirna (Form VII). The difference in meaning is not great — one is "to be split piece by piece" (Form V, intensive), the other "to be split" (the reflexive, muṭāwaʿa). I record it, but since it does not change the meaning I do not dwell on it.
| Question | Views |
|---|---|
| Above what? | (a) Above the heavens themselves — that is, downward from the highest heaven; (b) Above the earth, that is, over those on the earth |
| Why? | (a) Because of the mushrikūn's words — from the weight of associating partners; (b) Out of majesty — from the awe of God's greatness |
I do not impose a preference. But a comparison can be made from within the Qurʾān, and that comparison appears to support the first option of the second question:
"The heavens are almost split by it, the earth split open and the mountains fall down in ruin — that they ascribed a child to al-Raḥmān." (Maryam 19/90-91)
There the cause is stated plainly: an ascription. In al-Shūrā the cause is not stated. And its not being stated is a choice of arrangement: in al-Shūrā's context, immediately before this the source of revelation (3) and the owner of dominion (4) were set out; immediately after it will come the angels' asking of forgiveness. The sentence, that is, stands between two things and can be attached to both.
As my own reading: by not stating the cause the verse leaves the tension inside the sentence itself. In Maryam the cause is given and so the tension is resolved; here it is not given, and so it hangs.
| The upper half | The lower half | |
|---|---|---|
| Subject | The heavens | The angels |
| State | On the point of splitting — tension | Glorification and asking forgiveness — continuity |
| Direction | From above downward | Upward, for those below |
In the same sentence, then, there is both an overflowing tension and a work that calms it. And the direction of the calming work must be recorded: the angels ask forgiveness not for themselves but for those on the earth.
The pattern sabbaḥa bi-ḥamdihi was treated in al-Ḥadīd at 57/1: tasbīḥ is a putting away (declaring free of deficiency), ḥamd is a drawing near (praise in return for a favour). Their coming together gathers two directions into one act.
لِمَن فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ — "for those on the earth". The expression is general: no distinction is made between believer and unbeliever.
| Reading | Explanation |
|---|---|
| 1 | General — for everyone on the earth; asking forgiveness here means "asking for respite and mercy" |
| 2 | Qualified — it is qualified by the expression "they ask forgiveness for those who believe" in al-Muʾmin 40/7 |
Both readings are found in the classical sources; I do not impose a preference. What is to be recorded is this: the wording of this verse is unqualified, and the qualification is brought in from another verse.
The sentence uses three instruments of emphasis one upon another: alā (the particle of attention), inna (emphasis), huwa (the pronoun of separation, ḍamīr al-faṣl).
And this piling-up fits the place where the sentence stands: immediately before, it was said that the heavens are on the point of splitting. What follows is a sentence about forgiveness, emphasised three times over.
I record this as my own reading: the verse does not set up the tension and then resolve it; it sets forgiveness down beside the tension. The two stand in the same verse and neither cancels the other. The balance that will be established between pardon and right at the end of the sūra (40-43) appears here for the first time, on the divine side.