al-Zukhruf 43:6-8

Wa kam arsalnā min nabiyyin fi'l-awwalīn · Wa mā yaʾtīhim min nabiyyin illā kānū bihi yastahziʾūn · Fa-ahlaknā ashadda minhum baṭshan wa maḍā mathalu'l-awwalīn

"How many a prophet We sent among those of old. And no prophet came to them without their mocking him. So We destroyed those stronger than these in violence. The example of those of old has passed."

The arrangement uses three distinct tenses, and the sequence is worth recording:

That the middle verse comes in the imperfect carries information. In Arabic the imperfect, used in a past context, brings the scene before the eye and conveys repetition. The verse is therefore not saying "they mocked"; it is saying "they would mock, every time".

This builds the same structure as verse 23 later in the sūra: there too it will say mā arsalnā … illā qāla mutrafūhā — "We sent to no town without those of it who lived in ease saying this". The same pattern: negation plus exception.

This root is analysed here for the first time in the corpus.

The sense the lexicographers give: to make light of someone, to belittle, to make a thing an object of amusement. Hazaʾa bihi / istahzaʾa bihi — he made sport of him.

The pattern is striking: Form X (istifʿāl). In Arabic this form most often conveys "to reckon a thing so, to find it so" — istaḥsana (he found it beautiful), istathqala (he found it heavy). The description that follows is this: istihzāʾ is to reckon someone a thing to be laughed at.

And this shows the family the root belongs to. Three more words of the same family will occur in the sūra, and all are inside the question of measure:

All four do the same work: lowering the weight of the one in front of them. I record this as a pattern, and I give its link to the sūra's main question as an observation: mockery is an operation of weighing. It puts the other on the scale and declares him light.

Mockery was treated in detail in al-Ḥujurāt at 49/11; I rely on that treatment. The finding recorded there was this: the one who mocks turns the other into an instrument of his own amusement — he removes him from being a subject.

بَطْش — root ب-ط-ش. The root was treated in Qāf and in al-Burūj. Its core: to seize a thing with force and speed, to grasp and strike.

This verse was already cited in al-Burūj: "We destroyed those stronger than them in violence (ashadda minhum baṭshan)" (al-Zukhruf 43/8).

The form of the comparison is worth recording: the verse does not say "We destroyed them". It says "those stronger than them". The one addressed is thus not threatened directly; what is recounted is what befell someone stronger than he is.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the comparative pattern (afʿalu min): the verse does not frighten the one addressed, it corrects his scale. Without asking "how strong are you?", it supplies the frame within which the answer lies.

The root م-ض-ي: to pass on, to go forward, to cut through. Māḍī (the past tense) comes from this; sayfun mādin — a sword that cuts.

Mathal is from the root م-ث-ل: a likeness, an example, a cautionary narrative.

Two readings of the expression are transmitted:

Both are possible in point of language, and I do not impose a preference. What is to be recorded is that the word will return within the sūra: in the fifty-sixth verse it will be said of Pharaoh and his people wa mathalan li'l-ākhirīn (and an example for those who come after).

What is seen when the two ends are set side by side is this: in the eighth verse the example is taken from the past; in the fifty-sixth the example is left to the future. The same word, two directions.