al-Dhāriyāt 51:59-60

Fa-inna li'lladhīna ẓalamū dhanūban mithla dhanūbi aṣḥābihim fa-lā yastaʿjilūn · Fa-waylun li'lladhīna kafarū min yawmihimu'lladhī yūʿadūn "For those who do wrong there is a share like the share of their fellows. So let them not ask for haste. And woe to those who deny, because of the day they are promised!"

And this word carries one of the most concrete images of the sūra.

Root: ذ-ن-ب. Its concrete sense: a tail. Dhanab — a tail.

And what derives from it:

• ذَنُوب — a large bucket full of water. The explanation the lexicographers give: the part that hangs down at the bottom of a bucket drawn from a well is likened to a tail.
• And the word's usage: the bucket that falls to each of those drawing water from a well in turn.

And the real matter is this second usage.

In the desert a well is common property. Drawing water is done by turns and each man draws his own bucket. Dhanūb is "the share of the one whose turn it is".

The verse says, then: those who do wrong have a bucket too — like their fellows'.

And the three points on which the comparison works:

One — the share is equal. Mithla dhanūbi aṣḥābihim — like the bucket of their fellows. From the same well, by the same measure.

Two — there is a turn. At a well not everyone draws water at the same moment. One waits one's turn. And this is the ground of the next sentence: fa-lā yastaʿjilūn — let them not ask for haste.

Three — that one's turn has not come does not mean that there is no share. The man waiting at the well does not think his share will not be given him; he knows his turn has not come.

And this closes the circle with the sūra's fourteenth verse.

There the same verb had occurred: hādha'lladhī kuntum bihi tastaʿjilūn — "this is what you kept asking to be hastened."

Now the same verb, from the same root, but in the negative imperative: fa-lā yastaʿjilūn.

In the fifty-ninth verse the sūra gives an answer to the demand it mocked in the fourteenth. And the answer is not a date but a turn: you have a share, but you have a place in the order.

I record this as my own reading; the concrete sense of the word (a bucket, the share of the one whose turn it is) is what the lexicographers record, and that the verb in the two verses is from the same root is plain in the text.

Who? Two explanations in the classical sources:

The first is the stronger, because the sūra had given thirty-four of its verses to those peoples, and the word aṣḥāb is easily read here in the sense of "those who do the same thing".

And this reading completes the finding of the fifty-third verse: "did they enjoin this on one another?" Those who say the same word receive the same share.

The word وَيْل was treated in the discussion of al-Mursalāt 77/15; I do not repeat it. In summary: the word is used as a declaration of destruction and punishment, and in al-Mursalāt it stood at the centre of a refrain repeated ten times.

And here it occurs once — in the sūra's last verse.

And the word order is interesting: waylun li'lladhīna kafarū min yawmihim.

The particle min here conveys cause: "because of their day". The punishment, that is, comes out of the day itself.

And note the construct: yawmihim — "their day". The day has been annexed to them.

In the Qurʾān the day is generally named otherwise: yawmu'l-dīn, yawmu'l-qiyāma, yawmu'l-faṣl — the name of the day, that is, is taken from what will happen on that day. Here, however, the day is their day.

What this annexation does has to be seen: the day is no longer a general event but a personal appointment. And to the question they asked in the twelfth verse ("when is this day of reckoning?") the sūra gives an indirect answer in its last verse: that day is your day.

I record this as my own reading; the construct itself stands in the text.

And the sūra closes with a promise: alladhī yūʿadūn — "which they are promised". The same root (و-ع-د) was in the sūra's fifth verse too (mā tūʿadūna) and in the twenty-second (wa mā tūʿadūn).

In three places, that is, the sūra recalls a word with the same root:

The sūra opens by declaring the truth of a promise and closes by recalling the day of that promise. The fifty-five verses in between are the itemising of why that promise is true.