al-Zukhruf 43:87-88 commentary

43/87-88

وَلَئِن سَأَلْتَهُم مَّنْ خَلَقَهُمْ لَيَقُولُنَّ ٱللَّهُ ۖ فَأَنَّىٰ يُؤْفَكُونَ · وَقِيلِهِۦ يَٰرَبِّ إِنَّ هَٰٓؤُلَآءِ قَوْمٌ لَّا يُؤْمِنُونَ

Wa la-in saʾaltahum man khalaqahum la-yaqūlunna'llāh · Fa-annā yuʾfakūn · Wa qīlihi yā rabbi inna hāʾulāʾi qawmun lā yuʾminūn

"And if you ask them who created them, they will surely say 'God'. How then are they turned away? And his word: 'My Lord! These are a people who do not believe.'"

The return of the ninth verse

And the sūra repeats the sentence of the ninth verse almost word for word.

I complete here the comparison I set out above (in the discussion of 43/9):

	43/9	43/87
Question	man khalaqa's-samāwāti wa'l-arḍ	man khalaqahum
Scale	The universe	Themselves
Answer	khalaqahunna'l-ʿazīzu'l-ʿalīm	*Allāh*
What follows	A list of favours (10-13)	fa-annā yuʾfakūn

The sūra asks the same question twice and, the second time, reduces the scale.

And that the answer is shorter the second time must be recorded: in the ninth verse the answer came with two attributes; here it is a single word: Allāh.

I give this as an observation about the arrangement.

يُؤْفَكُون — root: أ-ف-ك

The root was treated in al-Aḥqāf at 46/11; I rely on that treatment. What was recorded there was this:

"إِفْك — root أ-ف-ك: to turn a thing away from its direction, to turn it inside out. That is, the word used for 'fabrication' means 'turned about'."

I add here the pattern in this verse: yuʾfakūn — passive: "they are turned away".

The pattern is worth recording, and I give this as an observation: the verse does not say "how do they turn", it says "how are they turned". The verb is passive. And in the thirty-sixth verse of the sūra it was said that a companion is matched to a person.

And the interrogative particle annā must be recorded: in Arabic annā means both "how" and "to where / from where". The question, that is, is a question about direction.

وَقِيلِهِۦ — the grammatical question of the sentence

This expression is the most disputed place in the sūra grammatically, and the disagreement must be transmitted.

First the variant reading:

Reading	Written form	Case
qīlihi (with kasra)	وَقِيلِهِ	Genitive
qīlahu (with fatḥa)	وَقِيلَهُ	Accusative

Both have been transmitted.

And for each reading different explanations are given of the word's connection within the sentence:

Reading	What it attaches to	Meaning
qīlihi (genitive)	In apposition to ʿilmu's-sāʿa in the eighty-fifth verse — "and the knowledge of his word is with Him"	The word too is on record
qīlihi (genitive)	To an unexpressed particle of oath — "by his word"	An oath
qīlahu (accusative)	To an unexpressed verb (wa yaʿlamu qīlahu) — "and He knows his word too"	Being known
qīlahu (accusative)	To dharhum in the eighty-third verse — "and leave his word"	Held to be weak

In this disagreement I impose no preference. What is to be recorded is this: whichever explanation is taken, the content of the sentence is the same — a complaint being put on record.

قِيل — a verbal noun from the root ق-و-ل (qawl, qīl and maqāla are verbal nouns of the same root). The lexicographers record that the qīl pattern turns speech that has been uttered into a noun.

The content itself: a complaint

And the content of the sentence must be recorded: yā rabbi inna hāʾulāʾi qawmun lā yuʾminūn.

I give this as my own reading, and its ground is the one the sentence is addressed to: the sentence is not said to the other side. It is said to the Lord.

One of the last utterances of the sūra, then, is a sentence the Prophet says not to people but to God. And the sentence contains no request — it asks for no punishment and no help. It states a finding, and nothing more.

And the verse that comes immediately after is the answer to that finding.