al-Dhāriyāt 51:31-34

Qāla fa-mā khaṭbukum ayyuha'l-mursalūn · Qālū innā ursilnā ilā qawmin mujrimīn · Li-nursila ʿalayhim ḥijāratan min ṭīn · Musawwamatan ʿinda rabbika li'l-musrifīn "'What is your business, then, O messengers?' he said. 'We have been sent to a guilty people,' they said — 'to loose upon them stones of clay; stones marked in your Lord's presence for those who go beyond all bounds.'"

Root: خ-ط-ب. Its concrete sense: to address, to call out to someone, to speak.

• خُطْبَة — a khuṭba, an address made to a gathering.
• خِطَاب — address.
• خَاطَبَ — he addressed him.
• خَطَبَ ٱلْمَرْأَةَ — he asked for a woman in marriage. This too is a speaking: the request is put into words.
• خَطْب — an important matter, an affair. It means "what is worth speaking about".

The question "what is your business?", then, means at its root "what have you to say?"

The Qurʾān always uses this word inside a question: "What was your business, O women?" (Yūsuf 12/51); "And what is your business, O Sāmirī?" (Ṭāhā 20/95); "What is your business, you two?" (al-Qaṣaṣ 28/23).

The pattern is the same: mā khaṭbukum / mā khaṭbuk. The word, that is, is used where "what is going on here?" is asked — in the face of something out of the ordinary.

Note the order. Abraham asks this question after the good news has been given.

The sequence is: fear → "do not be afraid" → good news → his wife's reaction → the answer → "what is your business, then?"

Abraham notices this, that is: this delegation cannot have come for good news alone. Three messengers are not sent for a piece of good news; and messengers depart when they have finished what they came for. These are still there.

I record this as an observation about the structure; the verse does not report Abraham's thought, only his question.

And the change of address: Abraham no longer calls them O guests, he says أَيُّهَا ٱلْمُرْسَلُونَ — "O you who are sent". The moment their identity is understood, that is, is recorded by this form of address.

In the thirty-second and thirty-third verses the same root occurs twice, and with two different subjects:

32: innā ursilnā — "we have been sent" (passive; we are not the subject) 33: li-nursila ʿalayhim — "that we may loose upon them" (active; we are the subject)

The messengers, then, are both sent and senders. They have come by a command themselves, and the work they have come for is to send something.

The finding recorded in the section on al-Mursalāt looks exactly at this: there the series' first word's being passive (mursalāt — those that are sent) was dwelt upon, and this was recorded: "That a thing which has been sent arrives is more certain than that a thing which has set out by itself arrives; because behind it there is a sender."

Here two links of the chain are visible at once: the sender → the messengers → the stones. And Abraham's form of address (al-mursalūn) names the link in the middle of the chain.

I record this as an observation about the structure.

حِجَارَة — stones (the plural of ḥajar). طِين — clay, wet earth.

And the construction is strange: stone and clay are opposites — one hard, the other soft.

Several explanations are transmitted in the classical sources:

The first and second explanations do not exclude one another. The word sijjīl was treated in the section on al-Fīl; that may be consulted.

And this detail is worth recording: the same event is recounted in several places in the Qurʾān, and each time the matter of the stone is named. The emphasis of the account, that is, is not on what the stone is but on where it comes from: from above.

Root: س-و-م. And the sense of the word needs to be dwelt on.

• سَامَ — to bring goods to market, to ask a price; and to put out to graze (sāʾima — a grazing animal).
• سِيمَا / سِيمَاء — a mark, a sign in the face. The Qurʾān uses it: "You will know them by their mark" (al-Baqara 2/273).
• مُسَوَّم — marked, stamped.

This root was touched on in the section on al-Fīl; I do not repeat it.

The word's function here: the stones are not random but addressed. The mark determines the target.

And this says that the punishment is not indiscriminate: destruction does not come down without distinction like a natural event; it comes down marked.

The thirty-fifth and thirty-sixth verses will confirm this: the believers are brought out. The distinction, that is, really is made.

The position of the adverbial phrase is striking: the stones are marked "in your Lord's presence". The marking, that is, is not done here, at the scene; it has been done at the source.

And note the change of pronoun: the angels say to Abraham "your Lord" (rabbika) — the second person singular. In the preceding verse too they had said to the woman "your Lord" (rabbuki).

The messengers do not speak in their own name; they point to the addressee's Lord. This agrees with the passive verb in the thirty-second verse (ursilnā): they do not present themselves as the source.

Root: س-ر-ف. Its concrete sense: to exceed the measure, to do more than is needed, to squander.

And in the Qurʾān the word is not used only of wealth; it is used for the overflowing of a measure in every field.

And what is striking is this: the verse names the people of Lot musrifīn. The Qurʾān describes this people with the same word elsewhere too: "You are a people who go beyond all bounds" (al-Aʿrāf 7/81) — bal antum qawmun musrifūn.

The word used in naming the people, that is, names not a sexual act but an overflowing of measure. This agrees with the general language the Qurʾān uses in describing this people.

I draw no ruling; I record the choice of the word.

And two words stand side by side: in the thirty-second verse mujrimīn (the guilty), in the thirty-fourth musrifīn (those who go beyond all bounds).

The root جرم: to pluck a thing off, to cut. Jarm — to pluck fruit from a branch. From here the sense "offence" arises: an offence is the breaking of a bond.

The two words say two different things: one the breaking of a bond, the other the exceeding of a measure.