al-Dukhān 44:21

Wa in lam tuʾminū lī fa'ʿtazilūn

"'And if you do not believe me, then keep away from me.'"

The verb has been made transitive not with bi- but with li-: tuʾminū lī.

This difference is recorded in Arabic:

Here li- comes. The sentence, that is, does not say "if you do not believe what I have brought" but "if you do not trust me".

I record this as a datum of language, and it has a consequence: in the preceding verse the messenger had introduced himself as amīn (trustworthy). Here he speaks of the possibility that this introduction will be refused.

This root has not been treated anywhere else in this index.

The concrete sense: to draw a thing to one side, to set it apart, to put it aside. ʿAzala — he removed from office; maʿzil — a corner, a place apart. In Form VIII, iʿtazala — to withdraw oneself, to keep away.

And the pattern matters: the verb is in Form VIII, that is, the pattern of drawing oneself aside. But the command is directed to the addressee: "draw yourselves away from me."

Now let us look at the scale of the demand, and I record this as my own reading.

The messenger's speech descends in three steps:

The demand, that is, grows smaller as it goes unaccepted. At the last step what is asked is not even faith but neutrality.

This reading is mine; its ground is the order of the three demands and the fact that the last sentence is made conditional (wa in lam tuʾminū).

And one more thing must be recorded: in the twentieth verse the messenger had taken refuge from being stoned. In the twenty-first what he asks is exactly the counterpart of that: do not touch me. The two verses together match the taking of refuge with the demand.