al-Shūrā 42:53

Ṣirāṭi'llāhi'lladhī lahu mā fi's-samāwāti wa mā fi'l-arḍ; alā ila'llāhi taṣīru'l-umūr

"The path of God, to whom belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth. Know well that to God all affairs return."

The word is an appositive substitute for the last word of the preceding verse (ṣirāṭin mustaqīm) — its explanation. The verse thus completes the preceding sentence: which straight path? The path of God.

And the definition is given by a relative clause: alladhī lahu mā fi's-samāwāti wa mā fi'l-arḍ.

This sentence is the sentence of the fourth verse. It was recorded in the section on the structure of the sūra; here it is completed:

Fifty verses apart, word for word the same sentence. This is a verifiable fact.

And the difference, as recorded at the fourth verse, is in its position: a statement at the beginning, a description at the end. The sūra closes the frame it opened with a sentence about dominion by making that same sentence the name of a path.

I record this as my own reading, and it is not binding: in the fourth verse the sentence was said as a fact; in the fifty-third as a direction. The same information, first as a state, then as a bearing.

The last sentence of the sūra, and it closes three rings at once.

First: the root ص-ي-ر. In the fifteenth verse wa ilayhi'l-maṣīr occurred; here the same root comes as a verb: taṣīru'l-umūr.

Second: the word al-amr. It occurs three times in the sūra:

Three occurrences, three scales: community, person, the whole. This is a fact that can be verified from the text.

I record this as my own reading, and it is not binding: the sūra uses the word "affair" three times, and in all three there is a question of ownership — whose affair is it? In the thirty-eighth verse it is the community's, in the forty-third the person's, and in the fifty-third the place to which all of them arrive is stated. And the three do not conflict: the affair is in the human being's hands, the human being decides it, but where it goes is settled.

Third: the particle alā. It occurs four times in the sūra, and all four are a sign of warning:

Four occurrences; and the last, unlike the other three, does not take inna. In its last sentence the sūra lets go of one instrument of emphasis.

I record this as an observation about the arrangement.

The sūra opened as a sūra about division: people divide, argue, take one another's rights. And its last sentence binds all of this to a single place.

But what must be noticed is this: the sentence does not say "all of it returns to God, so there is nothing to do." The sūra itself established the opposite: uphold the religion (13), stand straight (15), do justice (15), consult (38), take your right (39), pardon (40), spend (38).

The work of the last sentence is to take the outcome of these acts off the back of the human being — just as the sixth and forty-eighth verses took it off the back of the Prophet.

The work is done; where the work arrives is known elsewhere.