al-Dhāriyāt 51:57-58

Mā urīdu minhum min rizqin wa mā urīdu an yuṭʿimūn · Inna'llāha huwa'l-Razzāqu dhu'l-quwwati'l-matīn "I want no provision from them; nor do I want them to feed Me. It is God who is the Provider, the possessor of strength, the firm."

As was recorded above: the fifty-seventh verse closes off the wrong conclusion that might be drawn from the fifty-sixth.

And the manner of the closing is striking: it is in two stages.

First: mā urīdu minhum min rizqin — I want no provision from them. Second: wa mā urīdu an yuṭʿimūn — I do not want them to feed Me.

Do the two sentences say the same thing? No. And the difference is in the pattern of the words:

The first sentence says "I do not want your property", the second "I do not want your service".

And the two are distinct. A master may expect both property and service from his servant; the verse rejects both, separately.

I record this as an observation about the structure.

And the choice of verb looks to a historical background.

Root: ط-ع-م. This root was treated in the discussion of al-Māʿūn 107/3 (ṭaʿāmi'l-miskīn); I do not repeat it. In summary: ṭaʿām can mean both "food" (the thing) and "feeding" (the act), and this double possibility determined the reading of the construction there.

The ifʿāl form (aṭʿama) — to feed, to satisfy with food.

And the verse's choosing this verb has a concrete counterpart. In many religious traditions of the ancient Near East offering food at the temple was a central form of worship: food was presented to the god, sacrifice was offered, his table was laid.

The Qurʾān rejects this conception openly elsewhere too — about sacrifice itself: "Neither their flesh nor their blood reaches God; what reaches Him is your taqwā" (al-Ḥajj 22/37).

The fifty-seventh verse, that is, says that service is not an operation of "feeding". And this is a record that looks directly at the religious practices around the one addressed.

I record this as historical background; the verse al-Ḥajj 22/37 is an indication that comes from within the Qurʾān itself.

Root: ر-ز-ق. Treated above in the discussion of 51/22.

And the pattern is of the faʿʿāl measure: the measure that conveys a trade and a continuity in Arabic. The same measure was recorded above for kharrāṣ (51/10).

Setting the two words side by side is instructive:

The sūra uses the same measure at two extremes: the one who guesses continually and the one who gives continually.

I record this as my own reading; the measure of the two words is beyond dispute, it is I who build the relation between them, and it is not a claim of deliberate arrangement.

And al-Razzāq closes the circle with the sūra's fourth verse. The weave I recorded above in the discussion of 51/22 is completed:

Verse 4: al-muqassimāti amrā — those that apportion (the agent unnamed). Verse 22: wa fi'l-samāʾi rizqukum — the object is set down. Verse 58: inna'llāha huwa'l-Razzāq — the agent is named.

The sūra opens with a work, states the object of the work at its middle, and at its end gives the name of the one who does the work.

قُوَّة — root ق-و-ي: power, strength. The general word.

مَتِين — root م-ت-ن. And the concrete sense of this word is interesting:

• مَتْن — the back, the hard and durable part of a thing; the firm surface of the ground; the main body of a book (the Turkish metin, "text", comes from this branch).
• مَتُنَ — it became firm, it became durable.
• مَتِين — firm, unbreakable, durable.

The two words do not say the same thing, then:

And their standing together agrees with the verse's context. Giving provision is a continuous work; a continuous work is done not by momentary power but by durability.

A grammatical point: the word al-matīn is read in the nominative and made an adjective not of al-quwwa in the construct dhu'l-quwwati but of al-Razzāq. What is firm, that is, is not the strength but the possessor of strength. The classical sources dwell on this reading; other possibilities of case are recorded as well. Since I cannot give the variant readings with certainty I write no names and no attributions.

And the word's echo within the sūra: in the section on Sūrat al-Qalam, when the verse-endings were itemised, the word matīn was named (al-Qalam 68/45). In both sūras the word occurs in the same context: the strength of the one who grants respite.