حَتَّىٰٓ إِذَا جَآءَنَا قَالَ يَٰلَيْتَ بَيْنِى وَبَيْنَكَ بُعْدَ ٱلْمَشْرِقَيْنِ فَبِئْسَ ٱلْقَرِينُ · وَلَن يَنفَعَكُمُ ٱلْيَوْمَ إِذ ظَّلَمْتُمْ أَنَّكُمْ فِى ٱلْعَذَابِ مُشْتَرِكُونَ
Ḥattā idhā jāʾanā qāla yā layta baynī wa baynaka buʿda'l-mashriqayni fa-biʾsa'l-qarīn · Wa lan yanfaʿakumu'l-yawma idh ẓalamtum annakum fi'l-ʿadhābi mushtarikūn
"Until, when he comes to Us, he says: 'Would that between me and you were the distance of the two easts!' What an evil companion! Since you did wrong, it is of no use to you today that you share in the punishment."
The word is dual: al-mashriqayn — "the two easts". And here there is a well-known usage of Arabic: when two opposites are put in the dual, the name of one of them often stands for both.
| Construction | What it stands for | Its sense |
|---|---|---|
| al-ʿUmarān | Abū Bakr and ʿUmar | Both, under the name of one |
| al-qamarān | The sun and the moon | Both together |
| al-abawān | Mother and father | Both together |
| Reading | What al-mashriqayn is | The measure |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | East and west — by taghlīb | The two furthest known points on the earth |
| 2 | Two points of sunrise — the extremes at which the sun rises in summer and in winter | An observable yearly swing |
The first reading is the reading of the majority and is supported within the Qurʾān itself: in al-Raḥmān 55/17 there occurs rabbu'l-mashriqayni wa rabbu'l-maghribayn (treated in al-Raḥmān) — there the four extremes are enumerated separately.
The second reading is recorded by the lexicographers as well and has an observational ground: the point at which the sun rises swings along the horizon between two extremes over the course of the year; this is a fact that can be followed with the naked eye and is familiar to a people that finds its way in the desert.
But the work of the idiom is the same on either reading, and I record it as my own reading: the distance chosen as the measure is the greatest distance the person can know. The sentence does not say "were it very far"; it says "as far as the furthest known".
And this connects with the sūra's question of measure: distances and magnitudes have been argued about throughout the sūra — a great man, high degrees, silver ceilings. Here a person uses, for the first time, the limit of his own scale.
Layta in Arabic is used for a wish whose fulfilment is not possible. (Laʿalla, by contrast, conveys what is possible — as in the third and tenth verses.)
| Particle | Verse | What |
|---|---|---|
| laʿalla | 3, 10, 28, 48 | What is hoped for — still possible |
| layta | 38 | What is wished for — now impossible |
| View | Who says it |
|---|---|
| 1 | The person himself — the continuation of his words |
| 2 | The text — a verdict added to the person's words |
Both are possible, and I do not impose a preference. Biʾsa in Arabic is a verb of dispraise (a frozen verb conveying blame) and is generally used where the text delivers its own verdict.
The root ش-ر-ك: to be a partner, to have a share in something. The root has been treated in the corpus (al-Jinn, al-Muzzammil, al-Qalam).
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is that the sentence is built with lan yanfaʿakum: in this world, sharing a burden lightens it. The verse says that this will not work there.
And the interposed idh ẓalamtum gives the ground: "since you did wrong". The sharing does not divide the punishment, because the act was not divided either — each did his own act.