Muḥammad 47:27

Fa-kayfa idhā tawaffat-humu'l-malāʾikatu yaḍribūna wujūhahum wa adbārahum

"How will it be when the angels take them in death, striking their faces and their backs?"

كَيْفَ — an interrogative particle asking after a state: "how?"

And the predicate of the question is missing from the clause: it says "how will it be?" but does not say how what will be.

The grammarians supply an ellipsis: fa-kayfa yaṣnaʿūna / ḥāluhum — "how will they act / how will their state be?"

And the gap that the ellipsis creates is a device of rhetoric — this is a method the Qurʾān uses often: what is not said stays wider than what is said.

تَوَفَّىٰ — root و-ف-ي, Form V.

And the primary sense of the root is not "to kill": تَمَام — to complete, to give or take in full.

• وَفَّى — he paid in full.
• وَفَاء (wafāʾ) — to fulfil one's word completely.
• أَوْفَى — he completed, he gave in full. (At al-Muṭaffifīn 83/2-3 the matter of short measure was treated in al-Muṭaffifīn.)
• تَوَفَّى — to take in full.

That is, the verb used for "taking the soul" carries in its root the sense of "receiving in full".

And this is a subtlety standing in the choice of the word: death is named not as a thing's being cut off but as a thing's being completed.

I transmit this by way of the root sense the lexicographers record; for interpretations that might be drawn from it the verse gives no ground.

The third and last occurrence of the root ض-ر-ب in the sūra (3, 4, 27). It was treated at the third verse: three occurrences, three different senses.

And the objects: وُجُوه (faces) and أَدْبَار (backs).

This is also the third and last occurrence of the root د-ب-ر in the sūra (24, 25, 27).

A combined table of the three occurrences — the completion of the weave set up at verse 24:

And in the last verse both face and back are named: that is, both directions.

An observation — it is my own reading: in verse 25 the person had turned upon his back; that is, he had chosen a direction. In verse 27 both directions are struck. No direction is left to turn to.

I present this as a reading; the verse does not set up such a comparison.

And a note on method: the scene the verse describes (the angels striking as they take the soul) occurs in one other place in the Qurʾān in almost the same words — al-Anfāl 8/50: "When the angels take the souls of those who deny they strike their faces and their backs" (yaḍribūna wujūhahum wa adbārahum).

The same sentence in two verses. I record this as textual data.