Qāf 50:45

Naḥnu aʿlamu bimā yaqūlūn; wa mā anta ʿalayhim bi-jabbār; fa-dhakkir bi'l-Qurʾāni man yakhāfu waʿīd

"We know best what they say. You are not a tyrant over them. So remind with the Qurʾān whoever fears My threat."

This verse shows a choice about how the sūra ends, and the choice is striking.

For forty-four verses the sūra has spoken of resurrection, reckoning, Hell and the Garden. One would expect such a sūra to end with a warning, a threat or a summons.

But the last verse is not a warning; it draws a limit. And the limit is not the addressee's — it is the messenger's.

I record this as my own reading, but the one addressed in the verse is explicit in the text: wa mā anta… — "you".

The link with the thirty-ninth verse was recorded above and is completed here:

And the division of work between the two clauses is plain: what you are to do about what they say is to be patient; assessing what they say is not your task.

This is a sentence of consolation, and there are others like it in the Qurʾān. The finding transmitted from al-Baqara in the section on al-Ghāshiya is at work here too: "your task is to convey, not to produce the outcome."

Root: ج-ب-ر. This root was treated at length in the section on al-Ḥashr (in the treatment of al-Jabbār among the names of God) and I do not repeat the findings there. Their summary:

"The root sense the lexicographers give is twofold and both senses are alive in Arabic: 1. To set a break, to mend. […] 2. To compel, to force into submission. […] The link between the two senses is this: to set a broken bone is also to force the bone back into its place."

And this was also recorded in the section on al-Ḥashr, and it is directly at work here:

"The use of the word of a human being is always negative in the Qurʾān. At Maryam 19/32, wa lam yajʿalnī jabbāran shaqiyyā; at al-Qaṣaṣ 28/19, in turīdu illā an takūna jabbāran fi'l-arḍ. […] The same word is blamed in a human being and appears as praise in God. This is not a coincidence but a rule of the language: the worth of an attribute depends on whether the one who bears it has a right to it."

Now I add what belongs to Qāf.

One. The word is negated here — and the person of whom it is negated is the Prophet.

The verse does not blame the word and turn it against others. To the messenger, the one addressed in the sūra, it says "you are not this".

And the form of the negation is emphatic: mā anta … bi-jabbār. The بِ at the head is again a particle of emphasis: you are certainly not.

Two. The link with the twenty-fourth verse — recorded above and to be recalled here.

The Qurʾān uses the word ʿanīd together with jabbār in two places (jabbārin ʿanīd — Hūd 11/59; Ibrāhīm 14/15). This sūra separates the two words: ʿanīd is an attribute of the denier (24), while jabbār is the attribute denied of the messenger (45).

I present this link as my own reading.

Three. A comparison with al-Ghāshiya 88/22.

This verse was already mentioned in the section on al-Ghāshiya, where the word musayṭir was treated. The finding there:

"To be a musayṭir is a position the Qurʾān grants to no one. Neither are the addressees in that position (al-Ṭūr), nor the messenger (al-Ghāshiya)."

And the distinction drawn there holds here too:

"a finding states a state of affairs, while the negation of an attribute states an authority. Al-Ghāshiya says not that the outcome cannot be produced but that the authority to produce it has not been given."

Qāf 50/45 does the same work as al-Ghāshiya 88/22, and the two words complete one another:

Together the two remove two distinct authorities: the authority to supervise and the authority to compel.

And now we come to the plainest consequence of this verse.

The verse says that the messenger has no authority to compel. And this is not a sentence standing alone in the Qurʾān; it is part of a line:

• "There is no compulsion in religion" (al-Baqara 2/256).
• "You are not a musayṭir over them" (al-Ghāshiya 88/22).
• "Had your Lord willed, everyone on earth would have believed, all together. Will you then compel people until they become believers?" (Yūnus 10/99).
• "You cannot guide those you love" (al-Qaṣaṣ 28/56).
• "Remind; you are only one who reminds" (al-Ghāshiya 88/21).

In the section on al-Ghāshiya the logic of the verse from Yūnus was recorded thus:

"if faith were wanted by way of compulsion, that could have been done directly. Since it was not done, what is wanted is not the kind of thing that can be obtained by compulsion."

And the conclusion reached: "what can be obtained by force is not faith. Compulsion can produce behaviour; it cannot produce conviction."

Qāf 50/45 is the last link of this line and adds one more thing: the choice of word.

Jabbār, as was recorded in the section on al-Ḥashr, also carries the sense of mending: one who forces a break back into place.

And this is the finest side of the verse, and I give it as my own reading: because the two senses of the word stand together, the negation takes in two things at once. You are neither one who compels nor one who corrects by force.

What is rejected, that is, is not only ill-intentioned pressure; well-intentioned pressure too. The intention to set a broken bone does not wait for the consent of the bone's owner — and the verse removes exactly this position from the messenger.

I record this reading as my own reading; its support is the twofold sense of the root recorded in the section on al-Ḥashr.

And the ring closes.

The sūra began by swearing by itself and ends by commanding that reminding be done with itself.

And the particle bāʾ matters: bi'l-Qurʾān — "with the Qurʾān". The instrument of the reminding, that is, is specified.

Compulsion is taken out of the messenger's hand, and something is put in its place: a text.

I give this as my own reading, and its support is the word order of the sentence: the negation (mā anta… bi-jabbār) and the command (fa-dhakkir bi'l-Qurʾān) come one after the other and are joined by a fāʾ. The second, that is, is the consequence of the first: since you are not one who compels, then remind.

ذَكِّرْ — root ذ-ك-ر. And this is the sūra's third occurrence of dhikr:

Twice a noun, once a verb. The sūra turns the name it gave to the function of its two sections of proof into a command at the end.

And the verb is in the tafʿīl form: dhakkara — to remind (transitive). Not "remember", that is, but "remind".

This verse was mentioned in the section on al-Aʿlā, where findings were made about the limits of the command; I rely on that note.

And there is one further qualification in the last clause.

The command is not "remind everyone": man yakhāfu waʿīd — "whoever fears My threat".

How is this qualification to be read?

The first reading is widely adopted and agrees better with the context: the clause frames not a prohibition but a consolation. Once the limit of the authority has been drawn, where the outcome will be seen is stated.

And the word waʿīd comes for the last time — again without the yāʾ, exactly as in the fourteenth verse.

The sūra's chain of waʿīd closes thus: the threat came true in the past (14) → the threat became the name of a day (20) → the threat had been announced beforehand (28) → the one who fears the threat is the one to whom the reminding is addressed (45).

And one last observation.

The sūra does not end with a threat. The threat is named in the last clause, but the subject of the clause is not the threat; it is the reminding.

And the last command comes immediately after a limit: once what you cannot do has been said, what you can do is given.

I record this as my own reading: the sūra tells the one it addresses what he will not do before it tells him what he will do. And this order fits the whole method of the sūra. This is what it had been doing from the beginning: showing what the objection is not (not a proof but astonishment), and then showing what is to be done (not argument but looking).