Muḥammad 47:38

Hā antum hāʾulāʾi tudʿawna li-tunfiqū fī sabīli'llāh; fa-minkum man yabkhal; wa man yabkhal fa-innamā yabkhalu ʿan nafsih; wa'llāhu'l-ghaniyyu wa antumu'l-fuqarāʾ; wa in tatawallaw yastabdil qawman ghayrakum thumma lā yakūnū amthālakum

"Here you are, called upon to spend in the path of God. And some of you are miserly. Whoever is miserly is miserly only towards himself. God is the rich, and you are the poor. And if you turn away, [God] will put another people in your place; and then they will not be the likes of you."

The last verse of the sūra. And a verse that gathers all its lines together.

The verse opens with an extraordinary structure for drawing attention.

هَا — the particle of calling attention (tanbīh): "look, here!" أَنتُمْ — the second person plural pronoun: "you". هَٰٓؤُلَآءِ — a demonstrative (plural): "these people".

Three elements one upon another: a particle of attention, a pronoun, a demonstrative.

The grammarians resolve this structure in two ways:

The difference of meaning is not great; the function is the same: to point at the addressee in the strongest possible way.

And this structure occurs in several places in the Qurʾān and wherever it occurs there is a confrontation. Āl ʿImrān 3/66: hā antum hāʾulāʾi ḥājajtum fīmā lakum bihī ʿilm — "here you are, you have argued about a matter of which you have knowledge."

That is, the construction is like pointing at the addressee with a finger.

And the sūra's last verse opening with this construction completes the structure I recorded at the beginning of this commentary: the sūra began with "they" and ends with "here you are".

تُدْعَوْنَ — passive: "you are called". Who calls is not stated.

And the imperfect: the call is going on, not done and finished.

نَفَقَ / أَنفَقَ — root ن-ف-ق. And the concrete sense of the root is interesting: to run out, to be used up; and for a thing to be current, in demand.

• نَفَقَ ٱلشَّىْءُ — it ran out, it was used up.
• نَفَاق — currency, demand; goods being saleable.
• نَفَق — an underground tunnel (it occurs at al-Anʿām 6/35). And نَافِقَاء — the hidden second mouth of a field-mouse's burrow, by which it comes out in a moment of danger.
• مُنَافِق (munāfiq) — from the same root; like the animal with a two-mouthed burrow, a person with two ways out. This was treated in the section al-Munāfiqūn.

And the word infāq comes from the first sense: to use up wealth, to let it out of one's hand.

An observation — it is my own reading: the word names spending as "running out". And when this is read together with the clause in the second half of the verse (innamā yabkhalu ʿan nafsih) it sets up an interesting tension: in its root spending is a running out, but the verse says that withholding is the loss.

I present this as a lexical observation.

And in the word order of this clause there is a measure that must be recorded in terms of the method (Method).

The clause: مِنكُم مَّن يَبْخَلُ — "and some of you are miserly."

The particle مِن here announces the partitive (tabʿīḍ): a part of a whole.

That is, the verse does not attribute miserliness to the whole of those it addresses. It attributes it to a part.

This is worth recording because the clause was not built like this:

• wa antum tabkhalūn — "you are miserly". It does not say this.
• fa-tabkhalūn — "so you are miserly". Nor does it say this.

The verse gives a heavy attribute with a qualification.

And this is a method repeated throughout the sūra: in verse 24 qulūbin came indefinite ("some hearts"), and here minkum announces the partitive ("some of you").

In both places the scope is narrowed. I record this as an observation about word order and find it important in terms of the method (Method).

And now we come to the finest point of the verse.

In Arabic the verb bakhila is generally used with these particles:

• بَخِلَ بِـ — to withhold a thing (what is withheld with bāʾ).
• بَخِلَ عَلَىٰ — to be miserly towards someone (the one deprived with ʿalā).

The verse, however, uses عَن: يَبْخَلُ عَن نَّفْسِهِۦ.

عَن — a particle announcing separation, moving away: "from".

That is, the clause says: "he is miserly from his own self" — he practises his miserliness upon himself, he withholds from himself.

And this is strange on a first reading: the miserly person is holding on to the wealth; it is not that he is not giving himself something.

In the classical commentaries the explanation is given thus: the harm of miserliness returns not to the one deprived but to the miserly person himself. The wealth not given remains in his hand in this world; but he has deprived himself of its return in the hereafter.

And this agrees with the frame set up in the section al-Layl at 92/8 (wa ammā man bakhila wa'staghnā).

An observation — it is my own reading: the choice of particle turns the direction of miserliness around. Miserliness looks like a withholding directed outward; the verse names it a withholding directed inward. And this carries the same logic as the clause la-kāna khayran lahum in verse 21: both what is done and what is not done return first upon the doer.

And the word order of this clause determines its meaning directly.

There are two nominal clauses in the sentence, and the predicate of each is definite (carries the article):

• وَٱللَّهُ ٱلْغَنِىُّ — "al-ghanī"
• وَأَنتُمُ ٱلْفُقَرَآءُ — "al-fuqarāʾ"

In grammar a definite predicate announces qaṣr (particularisation).

That is, the sentence does not say:

• wa'llāhu ghaniyyun wa antum fuqarāʾ — "God is rich, you are poor." (an indefinite predicate)

It says:

"The rich one is God; the poor ones are you."

The difference is this: the first sentence states an attribute; the second makes a particularisation — the riches are His alone, the poverty yours alone.

غَنِىّ — root غ-ن-ي: to have no need, to suffice to oneself. And ٱلْغَنِىّ is more definite than "rich": one who has need of nothing.

فَقِير — root ف-ق-ر. And the concrete sense of the root matters: فَقَار (faqār) — the spine, the backbone. And faqīr, according to what the lexicographers record, is the one whose back is broken.

That is, the word names poverty as an inability to carry.

And this is of the same family as the picture of the root و-ه-ن in verse 35: wahn was the weakening of the bone; faqr is the breaking of the back.

Two words, two verses apart, coming from the same concrete picture: the collapse of the load-bearing structure.

I record this parallel as my own reading; the concrete senses of the two roots are lexical data, the connection between them is one I am making.

تَوَلَّىٰ — root و-ل-ي, treated at verses 11 and 22. The two directions of the word (to take charge / to turn away) were taken up at verse 22.

And the three conditional sentences of the sūra are completed:

The first two are positive conditions, the third negative. And the sūra closes with the negative one.

ٱسْتَبْدَلَ — root ب-د-ل, Form X: to put another in the place of a thing, to exchange.

From the same root بَدَل (a substitute), تَبْدِيل (exchanging), إِبْدَال.

And Form X here announces not a request but the doing of a thing willingly.

قَوْمًا غَيْرَكُمْ — "a people other than you". Indefinite: unspecified.

And the Qurʾān repeats this warning in several places:

al-Tawba 9/39 uses the same expression as the verse before us.

And the logic of the warning is this — I record it as textual data: the verses make replaceable not the work being done but the one who does it. The work stands; its bearer can change.

And the sūra ends with this sentence.

ثُمَّ — a conjunction announcing an interval (tarākhī): "then". Time passes in between.

لَا يَكُونُوٓا۟ أَمْثَٰلَكُمْ — "they will not be the likes of you".

And there is disagreement over the meaning of this expression:

All these views are transmitted in the classical commentaries. I make no preference.

And I record this: the sentence does not say what the coming people will be; it says only what they will not be. The description is given by way of negation — just like the qualifying of the four rivers in verse 15.

أَمْثَٰلَكُمْ is the last word of the sūra. And it is the third occurrence of the root م-ث-ل.

And the order of the pronouns shows exactly the movement I recorded at the beginning of this commentary:

هُمْ (theirs, 3) → هَا (its, 10) → كُمْ (yours, 38).

The sūra closes in the second person the word it opened in the third.

And a last observation — it is my own reading.

The sūra is a sūra of war. Its second name is given as Qitāl. Its fourth verse regulates the field of battle; its thirty-fifth forbids growing slack.

And the sūra does not end with a sentence about war.

The subject of the last verse is infāq — the spending of wealth. And the last warning is not a warning of defeat; it is a warning of replacement.

That is, the sūra finds the greatest danger not in the enemy but in the one it addresses. And in the last sentence what the addressee can lose is not the war; it is the standing of being the bearer.

I record this as a reading; that the sūra has chosen this closing is visible from the text, but the conclusion I draw from it is my own inference.