Qāf 50:38

Wa laqad khalaqna's-samāwāti wa'l-arḍa wa mā baynahumā fī sittati ayyāmin wa mā massanā min lughūb

"We created the heavens and the earth and what is between them in six days, and no weariness touched Us."

This expression was treated at length in the section on al-Ḥadīd 57/4; I do not repeat it. The summary of the findings there:

"The word يَوْم in Arabic does not mean only 'a day of twenty-four hours'. The primary sense of the root is a span of time, a period. […] how long the six 'days' lasted has not been stated and is not known. To close this indeterminacy and try to match it one to one with the periods of modern cosmology or geology is the forced scientific matching that the method (Method) forbids."

That note holds here too and is not repeated.

What belongs to Qāf is this: the clause that follows the expression here is different. In al-Ḥadīd the "six days" were followed by the istiwāʾ, the being-with, and the watching. Here what follows is the denial of weariness.

Its concrete sense: to grow tired, to be worn out, to have one's strength give out.

• لَغَبَ / لَغِبَ — he grew tired, he was worn out.
• لُغُوب — weariness; especially the exhaustion that comes after a task.
• لَاغِب — weary.

The lexicographers compare the word with taʿab (growing tired) and explain lughūb as its consequence: taʿab is the strain within the work itself, lughūb the exhaustion left after the work.

This distinction is not firm and the lexicographers do not draw it the same way everywhere; but it is transmitted and it agrees with the verse: the state after the work is done is what is named.

And the negation is again complete: mā massanā min lughūb — here too min completes the negation: not any weariness at all.

مَسّ — root م-س-س. To touch. The choice of word is striking: it does not say "We did not grow tired", it says "weariness did not touch Us". Weariness is described as something that comes from outside and makes contact, and that contact does not happen.

The link recorded above (at verse 15) closes here, and it can be verified:

Both verses say the same thing: creating brought God no burden.

And the difference between the two agrees with their places in the sūra: the fifteenth verse stands in the section of proofs, in the form of a question; the thirty-eighth in the closing section, in the form of a verdict.

The sūra asks the same claim first and answers it afterwards. I record this as an observation.

In the classical commentaries a background is recorded for the expression at the end of this verse, and it would be a defect to pass it by without transmitting it. But how it is transmitted matters.

What is recorded is this: some exegetes say that the expression "no weariness touched Us" is an answer to an understanding according to which God rested after the creation.

Now several things need to be said in order to put this note in its place, and I say each of them separately, marking its measure.

One. In the creation narrative of the Torah, rest on the seventh day is spoken of. At Genesis 2:2-3 it is related that God finished His work on the seventh day, rested, and hallowed that day. This is the text's own statement and is verifiable information.

Two. How this expression is to be understood has been separately debated within the traditions that hold that text sacred, and those traditions have their own views interpreting "rest". In this commentary no blanket ruling is issued about the text or the tradition of another religion — this is the principle written in the method (Method). I therefore frame no sentence of the form "such and such a religion believes thus".

Three. It is not certain that the verse is answering a particular text. The Qurʾān uses this expression not in a context of debate but within its own chain of proofs: it completes the question of the fifteenth verse. I transmit no report as an occasion of revelation, because I cannot vouch for its soundness.

Four. And this distinction must be recorded: "resting" and "growing tired" are not the same thing. That a text speaks of rest does not necessarily mean that it speaks of weariness.

Five. What the verse does within itself is plain and not disputed: the denial of human limits with respect to God. To grow tired, to have one's strength give out, to need to recover after a task — these are the states of finite beings.

And this agrees with a principle the Qurʾān repeats: "There is nothing like Him" (al-Shūrā 42/11). The same principle was recorded in the section on al-Fajr.

I give these five points to this extent and in this order, because the historical side of the matter is real but what can be claimed is limited.

This verse takes aim at one of the oldest objections to the resurrection.

The objection is this: creating is a hard work; it has been done once; doing it a second time requires fresh power.

The verse removes the premise: the first creation entailed no burden. There is therefore no question of gathering power to repeat it.

This is the last link of the chain of proofs the sūra has been building from the beginning:

And from the thirty-ninth verse the proofs end; the commands begin.