al-Jāthiya 45:21-22

"Do those who commit evil deeds suppose that We shall treat them like those who believe and do righteous deeds, that their life and their death shall be equal?"

The root is analysed here for the first time in this series.

The concrete sense: to wound, to cut open. Jurḥ — a wound. And from the same root comes jawāriḥ: birds of prey and — strikingly — the limbs of a person, that is, the hand, the foot, the eye.

The lexicographers make the connection thus: the limbs are called jawāriḥ because it is with them that gain is acquired; and ijtirāḥ likewise means "to earn, to acquire". The "wounding" branch of the root and the "earning" branch meet by way of the picture of hunting: the bird of prey earns by wounding.

I transmit this as a relation established by the lexicographers, not as a settled etymological ruling.

The choice of word is worth recording: for those who do evil the verse does not use the verb ʿamilū (they did) — it uses a verb that carries the sense of earning and of wounding. For the other side it says ʿamilu'ṣ-ṣāliḥāt.

What the sentence rejects is that the two groups should be held equal both in life and in death.

There is disagreement over how this expression is to be understood:

All three readings are transmitted; I do not impose a preference.

سَآءَ مَا يَحْكُمُونَ — "how evil is the judgement they make." And the verb is yaḥkumūn — to pass judgement. That is, what the other side does is named as a verdict. The sūra's axis of knowledge passes here onto the plane of judgement: the claim is not merely a claim to knowledge, it is a claim to a ruling.

وَخَلَقَ ٱللَّهُ ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضَ بِٱلْحَقِّ وَلِتُجْزَىٰ كُلُّ نَفْسٍۭ بِمَا كَسَبَتْ — and the ground is given: creation is bi'l-ḥaqq. The same note was treated in al-Aḥqāf at 46/3 (illā bi'l-ḥaqqi wa ajalin musammā); I rely on that treatment. The ground of the distinction is given not as a desire to punish but as a stipulation set upon creation itself.