Muḥammad 47:32

Inna'lladhīna kafarū wa ṣaddū ʿan sabīli'llāhi wa shāqqu'r-Rasūla min baʿdi mā tabayyana lahumu'l-hudā lan yaḍurru'llāha shayʾā; wa sa-yuḥbiṭu aʿmālahum

"Those who deny, and turn others away from the path of God, and stand on the opposite side from the Messenger after the guidance has become clear to them, can do God no harm at all. [God] will void their deeds."

The first two verbs of the verse are letter for letter the same as the first verse of the sūra:

And a third verb is added: وَشَآقُّوا۟ ٱلرَّسُولَ.

That is, towards the end of the sūra the opening sentence comes back with a verb and a qualification added.

Root: ش-ق-ق. Its primary sense: to split, to divide in two. This root has been treated in many places in this commentary — al-Inshiqāq (the name of the sūra), ʿAbasa (80/26 — shaqaqna'l-arḍa shaqqā), al-Qamar (54/1 — wa'nshaqqa'l-qamar), al-Ḥashr, Qāf, al-Raḥmān and others. I do not repeat it here.

What is to be added here is the work of Form III.

شَاقَّ — Form III: reciprocity. And the picture of the word is this:

شِقّ (shiqq) — the half, one side of a thing. When a thing is split there are two shiqqs.

And mushāqqa is the two parties' standing on separate halves: one on one side, the other on the other.

That is, the word says something more concrete than "enmity": to stand on two separate parts of the same whole.

And in the section al-Ḥashr this word occurred in the same context: at al-Ḥashr 59/4 there is the expression shāqqu'llāha wa rasūlahu, and it was recorded there. The same word, the same structure, in two Medinan sūras.

There is a difference and it is worth noting: in al-Ḥashr the object is God and His Messenger; here it is only the Messenger (shāqqu'r-Rasūla).

This qualification occurred letter for letter in verse 25 and was treated there: the verse does not issue a ruling upon one who does not know.

The use in the two verses is the same, and the repetition shows the importance of the qualification.

ضَرَّ — root ض-ر-ر: to harm. Its opposite is نَفْع (benefit).

لَن — the strongest negation of the future. And شَيْـًٔا is in the accusative: "in any thing at all" — an absolute object, widening the negation.

That is, the sentence: "they cannot harm Him in any way, not by a particle."

And this sentence does the same work as the qualification in verse 4:

Both sentences close off the same misunderstanding: this is not a work carried on to make good a lack in God.

And in the section al-Ṣaff, at 61/8 (yurīdūna li-yuṭfiʾū nūra'llāhi bi-afwāhihim), the same disproportion was treated. What was recorded there holds here too.

The third and last occurrence of the root ح-ب-ط in the sūra (9, 28, 32).

And this time the verb is in the future: سَيُحْبِطُ.

Of the three occurrences two are perfect, the last future.

And this stands like a preparation for the next verse — it is my own reading: verse 33 will say lā tubṭilū, that is, it will give the addressee an act. The future tense shows that the ruling has not yet closed.

I present this as a reading; whether the sīn here announces certainty or time can be debated.