وَجَعَلُوا۟ لَهُۥ مِنْ عِبَادِهِۦ جُزْءًا ۚ إِنَّ ٱلْإِنسَٰنَ لَكَفُورٌ مُّبِينٌ · أَمِ ٱتَّخَذَ مِمَّا يَخْلُقُ بَنَاتٍ وَأَصْفَىٰكُم بِٱلْبَنِينَ
Wa jaʿalū lahu min ʿibādihi juzʾā · Inna'l-insāna la-kafūrun mubīn · Ami'ttakhadha mimmā yakhluqu banātin wa aṣfākum bi'l-banīn
"They assigned to Him a part of His own servants. Truly the human being is plainly ungrateful. Or has He taken daughters for Himself out of what He creates, and set aside sons for you?"
The fourteenth verse ended with a glorification from a human mouth: subḥāna'lladhī sakhkhara lanā hādhā. The fifteenth opens with an ascription made by that same human being.
The harshness of the transition must be recorded, and I give it as my own reading: the distance between the two verses is one word. Glorification and imputation are set side by side — and the connector between them is only a wāw.
| Verse | Agent | Object |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | jaʿalnā — We | We made the Qurʾān Arabic |
| 10, 12 | jaʿala — He | He made the earth a cradle, the animal a mount |
| 15 | jaʿalū — They | They assigned a part to Him |
The same verb, in the same sūra, three times. In the first two there is a real transformation: something is put from one state into another. In the third, a verdict is passed: "they reckoned it so".
In Arabic jaʿala carries this second sense as well: to accept something as such, to deem it so. And in the nineteenth verse the same verb will come again in this sense: wa jaʿalu'l-malāʾikata … ināthā — "they reckoned the angels female".
I record this as an observation about the structure: the sūra uses the same verb for making and for deeming, and shows the difference between them by changing the agent.
The sense of the root: to divide, to break into parts; and the part of a whole. Juzʾ — a part, a portion. The Turkish words cüz and cüzi come from here. From the same root ajzaʾa — he apportioned; jazāʾ (in the sense of sufficiency) — one part's standing in place of another.
| Reading | What juzʾ means |
|---|---|
| 1 | Offspring — a child is counted as a part of the father |
| 2 | A share, a portion — reckoning some of the servants as belonging to Him |
The first reading takes support from the context, since immediately after it comes "has He taken daughters and set aside sons for you". I do not impose a preference; but that this particular word was chosen is worth recording.
I give this as my own reading, and its ground is the meaning of the root: juzʾ means divisibility. For a thing to have a part, that thing must be divisible. Before rejecting the claim, then, the verse names what is inside the claim: division.
And this is the same line as the one treated in al-Ikhlāṣ. It was recorded there:
"The first addressees were not claiming that God was born… Their claim was that God had a child: the angels are His daughters. The Qurʾān raises this belief again and again and rejects it: al-Najm 53/21-22; also al-Naḥl 16/57, al-Ṣāffāt 37/149-153, al-Zukhruf 43/16-19."
The analysis of al-Ṣamad in the discussion of al-Ikhlāṣ attaches directly here: not divided, not hollow, not broken into parts. I rely on that treatment and do not repeat it.
The root ك-ف-ر: to cover, to conceal (a farmer is called kāfir because he covers the seed with soil). The root has been treated in many places in the corpus.
Kafūr is an intensive form (فَعُول): one who covers much, a deep ingrate. And mubīn comes beside it — "plainly".
The choice of word must be recorded: the verse does not say kāfir, it says kafūr. The lexicographers use the pattern kafūr mostly in the sense of covering over a favour — not so much the refusal of belief as failing to make a return.
And this accords exactly with the context — I record it as my own reading: the four preceding verses were enumerating favours (earth, road, water, mount). The fifteenth verse names the ascription made about the owner of those favours "ingratitude". The matter is set here, that is, not as an error of creed but as covering over what has been given.
This is the third occurrence of the word mubīn in the sūra (2: al-kitābi'l-mubīn; 15: kafūrun mubīn; and in 18 ghayru mubīn will come). The same root: the Book is clear, the ingratitude is clear, and a human being is reckoned "not clear".
Am here is munqaṭiʿa: "or rather…" — and the lexicographers render it with bal + hamza (rather + the interrogative of denial).
أَصْفَىٰ — root ص-ف-و. The concrete sense of the root: a thing's being clear, unmixed, without sediment. Ṣafā — it became clear. Ṣafwa — the cleanest, choicest part of a thing. Iṣṭafā — he chose out and set apart.
The choice of word does the verse's work, and I record it as an observation: the verse does not say "did He give the sons to you?" It says "did He set apart the sons for you, choose out the pure portion and give it to you?" The logic of division inside the claim is thus brought to light: He gave the good portion not to Himself but to the other side.
The same logic occurs in a sharper sentence in al-Najm 53/21-22: a-lakumu'dh-dhakaru wa lahu'l-unthā · tilka idhan qismatun ḍīzā — "is the male yours and the female His? That would be an unjust division." It was treated in al-Najm.
The root ض-ي-ز occurred there: crooked, unjust division. And in this sūra the same question will return in the thirty-second verse — a-hum yaqsimūna raḥmata rabbik (is it they who divide out your Lord's mercy?). The sūra thus takes up the idea of "dividing out" twice: once in the divine field (16), once in the human field (32).