وَوَصَّيْنَا ٱلْإِنسَٰنَ بِوَٰلِدَيْهِ إِحْسَٰنًا حَمَلَتْهُ أُمُّهُۥ كُرْهًا وَوَضَعَتْهُ كُرْهًا وَحَمْلُهُۥ وَفِصَٰلُهُۥ ثَلَٰثُونَ شَهْرًا
Wa waṣṣayna'l-insāna bi-wālidayhi iḥsānā · Ḥamalathu ummuhū kurhan wa waḍaʿathu kurhā · Wa ḥamluhū wa fiṣāluhū thalāthūna shahrā
"We have counselled man to do good to his parents. His mother carried him with hardship and gave birth to him with hardship. His carrying and his weaning are thirty months."
The first block had closed at the fourteenth verse. From the fifteenth verse to the twentieth the sūra sets up two pictures of a human being, and both are described by way of the same relationship: the relation with one's parents.
This is the most striking choice in the structure of the sūra, and I record it as my own reading: the first block related those who demanded evidence and did not take it. The second block picks the piece of evidence that lies nearest: a person's own birth. The same method will be at work in the twenty-sixth verse too — the ears, the eyes and the hearts that had been given to ʿĀd.
The root: to bind one thing to another, to join them; and to advise, to bequeath. The lexicographers record the root's sense of "joining" (waṣā'n-nabt — the twining of a plant about itself).
The root has occurred in this commentary in al-ʿAṣr and al-Balad (tawāṣaw bi'l-ḥaqq, tawāṣaw bi'ṣ-ṣabr) — there it was in the reciprocal form (Form VI). Here it is Form II, and the agent is God: waṣṣaynā.
The choice of form is worth recording: the ruling is given not with the verb "we commanded" but with the verb "we counselled".
The root ك-ر-ه: dislike, hardship, heaviness. The root was treated in al-Baqara at 2/216 (wa huwa kurhun lakum) and at 2/256 (lā ikrāha fi'd-dīn).
What the repetition does is this: two distinct hardships are counted separately — the carrying and the giving birth. They are not merged and passed over in a single word.
I record this as an observation: the verse gives the ground of the counsel not in an abstract language of rights but through the description of a bodily hardship. And the side that bears the hardship is named: ummuhū. The counsel is for the two of them (wālidayh); the detail is for the mother.
It is transmitted that in the classical works of law this verse is read together with al-Baqara 2/233 (ḥawlayni kāmilayn — two full years of suckling), and that a conclusion about the minimum term of pregnancy is drawn from the difference between the two.
This is an inference and must be marked as one: the verse does not make this calculation itself. I pass it on as a transmitted inference, not as the literal ruling of the verse. Per the method (Method), I do not establish a legal conclusion.
حَتَّىٰٓ إِذَا بَلَغَ أَشُدَّهُۥ وَبَلَغَ أَرْبَعِينَ سَنَةً قَالَ رَبِّ أَوْزِعْنِىٓ أَنْ أَشْكُرَ نِعْمَتَكَ
"Then, when he reaches his full strength and reaches forty years, he says: My Lord! Move me … to give thanks for Your favour."
أَشُدّ — root ش-د-د: strength, firmness. Ashudd is the age at which the strength of body and of mind is complete.
The age of forty is named explicitly only here in the Qurʾān. It is transmitted that in the classical commentaries this is named as the age at which maturity is complete; I do not draw a firm ruling about a limit from it.
أَوْزِعْنِىٓ — root و-ز-ع: the sense given by the lexicographers is to take hold of something and steer it, to rein it in, to make a task dear to someone and turn him towards it. The word's connection with the sense of "keeping an army in order" is recorded.
The content of the prayer is worth recording: the man does not ask for wealth, for long life or for success — he asks to be able to give thanks. That is, what is asked for is not a thing given but the stance to be taken towards what is given.
وَأَصْلِحْ لِى فِى ذُرِّيَّتِىٓ — "and set right for me my offspring." The prayer reaches out beyond himself. The fifteenth verse had begun with the parents; the man of forty names his children. The two ends of the chain meet in a single verse.