Muḥammad 47:2

Wa'lladhīna āmanū wa ʿamilu'ṣ-ṣāliḥāti wa āmanū bimā nuzzila ʿalā Muḥammadin wa huwa'l-ḥaqqu min rabbihim kaffara ʿanhum sayyiʾātihim wa aṣlaḥa bālahum

"And those who believe and do righteous deeds and believe in what has been sent down to Muḥammad — and it is the truth from their Lord — [God] has covered over their evil deeds and set right their bāl."

The first two verses of the sūra form a pair. The same pattern is built twice, for two groups. Let us see the symmetry first:

The symmetry is not complete, and its incompleteness is the real matter of the verse.

The expected symmetry would have been this: if the deeds of the first group are voided, it should have been said that the deeds of the second group are accepted — something like wa qabbila aʿmālahum. But the verse does not say that.

The object changes. In the first verse what is acted upon is deeds. In the second verse what is acted upon is evil deeds. That is:

• The good work of the denier is touched → it is lost.
• The bad work of the believer is touched → it is covered.

This is not an accident but a choice; and it says two things.

First: the acceptance of the believer's deed is not spoken of, because that is not the matter of the verse. The matter of the verse is what happens to the minus column in the ledger of the two groups. The denier's plus column is erased; the believer's minus column is erased.

Second — and this is finer: the verse says nothing at all about the believer's good deeds, because it had already counted them at the outset: wa ʿamilu'ṣ-ṣāliḥāt. That is, the righteous deed occurs not as the subject of the reward but as a part of the description of the group. The reward is added on top of the description.

In the description of the denier, by contrast, there was no deed. The description was "they denied and they obstructed"; then the ruling was "He made their deeds lost". That is, the deed occurred not in the description but in the ruling — and there it was lost.

This reading is mine. The difference of object between the two verses is a fact standing in the text; the division of labour I draw from it is my own inference.

Āmanū occurs twice in the verse:

1. وَٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ — those who believe. 2. وَءَامَنُوا۟ بِمَا نُزِّلَ عَلَىٰ مُحَمَّدٍ — and who believe in what has been sent down to Muḥammad.

The repetition is not idle. Several explanations are given in the classical commentaries:

I make no preference. I record this: what the second āmanū attaches to is not a person but a text — bimā nuzzila, "in what has been sent down". What is believed in is not Muḥammad but what has been sent down to him. This is the verse's own wording, and its being in the sentence from which the sūra's name is taken is worth noting.

نُزِّلَ — root ن-ز-ل, Form tafʿīl, passive: "it was sent down".

Two points:

One — the matter of the form. The lexicographers and the exegetes record a distinction between إِنزَال (ifʿāl) and تَنزِيل (tafʿīl): ifʿāl announces a sending down all at once, tafʿīl a sending down piece by piece, gradually. The Qurʾān's coming down piecemeal over twenty-three years is named with the word tanzīl.

This distinction is recorded in the classical sources; but it has also been pointed out that it is not applied consistently everywhere in the Qurʾān. Indeed in the twentieth verse of this sūra the two forms will stand side by side in the same sentence (law lā nuzzilat sūra… fa-idhā unzilat sūratun muḥkamatun), and I shall take up this distinction separately there.

Two — the passive. It says "was sent down", not "We sent down". The subject of the verb is not stated — just as the subject of aḍalla was not stated in the preceding verse. In both of the sūra's first two verses the agent is veiled.

This is a jumla muʿtariḍa (an interposed clause): a judgement squeezed in while the description is still running.

The word order has three details:

One. A definite predicate. wa huwa'l-ḥaqqu — "it is the truth". The predicate carries the definite article. In Arabic a definite predicate announces restriction (qaṣr): "it is the truth itself", "the truth is this". Had it been said wa huwa ḥaqqun (indefinite), it would have been "it is a truth" — one among others.

Two. مِن رَّبِّهِمْ — "from their Lord". The pronoun refers back to the believers. That is, the truth is described not as an abstract correctness but as something coming from their Lord. The attribution is made to the source.

Three. And this clause's link with the third verse is direct: the third verse will repeat the same word with the same construct — ittabaʿu'l-ḥaqqa min rabbihim. That is, the interposed clause in the second verse is the preparation for the ground given in the third.

Root: ك-ف-ر. And there is something here that has to be said carefully.

The first word of the first verse and the verb of this verse are from the same root.

• 47/1: كَفَرُوا۟ — kafarū (they denied).
• 47/2: كَفَّرَ — kaffara (He covered over).

The same three letters. A different form, an opposite outcome.

The primary sense of the root is to cover. This root was analysed in full in al-Baqara (2/6) and taken up again in al-Kāfirūn and al-Ḥadīd; I do not repeat it here. In summary: the farmer is called kāfir because he covers the seed with earth — and the reading of the expression aʿjaba'l-kuffāra nabātuh at al-Ḥadīd 57/20 in the sense of "the farmers" was treated in detail in al-Ḥadīd. The night, too, is called kāfir, because it covers everything. Kufr is the covering of the truth.

And takfīr (Form tafʿīl) performs the same covering in the positive direction: covering over a sin.

That is, in the first two verses of the sūra the same verb works twice:

The Qurʾān appears to set up a relation of requital by using the same root: the deed of the one who covers the truth is lost; the sin of the one who does not cover the truth is covered.

I record this comparison as my own reading. That the two words are from the same root is lexical data and beyond dispute; the symmetry between them is one I am setting up, and I ascribe it to no classical exegete.

There is a particle too: عَنْ. Kaffara ʿanhum — "covered them over, [removing it] from them". When the verb is made transitive with the particle ʿan it carries, besides covering, a sense of removal. The sin is both covered and taken away from the person.

This is the least known word in the verse, and it deserves to be dwelt upon.

بَال — root ب-و-ل. The lexicographers give the word these senses:

These four senses are not disconnected from one another. The common core is this: bāl is a person's inward condition — not the state visible from outside but the inner position that produces that state.

There is no exact English equivalent. "State" is too external; "heart" too emotional; "mind" too abstract. The nearest is perhaps "inward state" or "the order of one's heart".

In the Qurʾān the word bāl occurs in four places, and all four are instructive:

Two of the occurrences are in this sūra, and both with the same verb: aṣlaḥa / yuṣliḥu.

Root: ص-ل-ح. Its primary sense: a thing's being serviceable, sound, unspoiled. Its opposite is فَسَاد (corruption).

And note: at the centre of the word lies not repair but fitness. A tool is ṣāliḥ — that is, it is in a state to do its work. Food is ṣāliḥ — it has not gone bad.

Inside the verse this root occurs twice:

1. ٱلصَّٰلِحَٰتِ — righteous deeds (in the description). 2. أَصْلَحَ — He set right (in the ruling).

That is: the bāl of those who do righteous work is set right (iṣlāḥ). The same root names first what a person does, then what is done to a person.

This may be the most striking place in the verse, and it raises this question: why was the setting right of the bāl chosen as the requital?

The answer that can be read from the text is this: the verse gives the requital not as an outward reward but as an inward condition. Neither property, nor rank, nor victory. Evil deeds are covered and the inward order is repaired.

And this gains its meaning in the context of the sūra. This is a sūra that came down to a community in a setting of war. In such a setting the expected promise is victory. The verse does not speak of victory — it speaks of the setting right of the inward state. The fifth verse will repeat the same expression for those killed in the fighting; there too the promise is the same: wa yuṣliḥu bālahum.

I record this finding as my own reading. The meaning of the word and its two occurrences are textual data; the interpretation I draw from them — that the promise lies not outside but within — is my own inference.