al-Najm 53:29-30

Fa-aʿriḍ ʿan man tawallā ʿan dhikrinā wa lam yurid illā'l-ḥayāta'l-dunyā · Dhālika mablaghuhum mina'l-ʿilm; inna rabbaka huwa aʿlamu bi-man ḍalla ʿan sabīlihi wa huwa aʿlamu bi-mani'htadā "So turn away from him who turns away from Our reminder and wants nothing but the life of this world. That is the extent of their reach in knowledge. Your Lord knows best who has strayed from His way, and He knows best who has found guidance."

Root: ع-ر-ض. The concrete sense of the root: breadth, width. ʿArḍ — breadth (the opposite of length); ʿarīḍ — wide.

And أَعْرَضَ (Form IV): to turn one's side, to turn away. The link is visual: if you do not turn your face to someone you show him your breadth — that is, you stand sideways.

Two notes about the word:

One: the verb belongs both to the one addressed and to the other party. The same movement is used twice in the verse:

• Aʿriḍ (an imperative, to the Prophet) — you turn away.
• Tawallā (of the other party) — he has already turned his back.

Two different roots (ع-ر-ض and و-ل-ي) but the same movement. And the order is this: first he turned, then you turn. What is commanded is not an initiation but a response.

Two: this command has a limit, and it must be said. In some places the Qurʾān commands turning away from the one addressed, in others it insistently commands the delivery of the message. How the two kinds of command are reconciled is a question of exegesis and has no single answer. I issue no ruling. The verse's own note is this: the person to be turned away from is one who bears a particular attribute — and that attribute is described in two clauses.

Root: و-ل-ي. This root was analysed in full in the section al-Ghāshiya, and verse 33 of this sūra was given there as an example. I do not repeat that analysis; the summary:

Tawallā is in Form V, and in this form the root turns in the opposite direction: to come out of nearness, to turn one's back and move away. That the same root carries both "to be a friend" and "to turn one's back" gives the picture of the word: both are a matter of direction. The one who is near has turned his face; the one who withdraws his back. The verb has one further nicety: tawallā conveys a physical movement — to turn one's back and go. Refusal is described here not as an argument but as a withdrawal. The person does not oppose; he leaves.

The closing sentence of the section on al-Ghāshiya is decisive here: the person does not oppose, he leaves. And this coincides exactly with the attitude described in verses 29-30: not an argument but an indifference.

And the verb occurs twice in this sūra: 29 (man tawallā) and 33 (alladhī tawallā). In the second a particular person will be recounted. The sūra describes the attribute first, then shows an example who bears it.

And without this second clause the first would remain incomplete.

Turning away is not an attribute on its own; it may have a cause. The second clause gives the cause: he wants nothing else.

أَرَادَ — root ر-و-د. The concrete sense of the root is of interest: رَادَ — to go about seeking a place, to seek pasture. رَائِد (rāʾid) — the scout who seeks water and pasture for the tribe; the guide who goes ahead of the caravan.

Irāda, then, carries in its root the idea of seeking: to seek a thing, to go after it.

And the structure of the negation matters: lam yurid illā — "he wanted nothing else." The verse does not censure the person's wanting the life of this world; it records his wanting only that.

The difference is real. Wanting the life of this world is not something the Qurʾān censures; indeed the Qurʾān teaches as a prayer the sentence "Our Lord, give us good in this world and good in the hereafter" (al-Baqara 2/201). What is censured is the limit of the wanting.

مَبْلَغ — root ب-ل-غ. This root was treated in the sections al-Qalam and al-Jinn. What was recorded in the section on al-Jinn:

To arrive somewhere, to reach, to attain. Balagha — he reached. Bāligh — one who has reached the age of maturity. Balāgha — the art of bringing a statement's meaning to its target.

مَبْلَغ is the noun-of-place pattern: the place reached, the point arrived at, the stage.

And one must see what the sentence says.

The verse does not say: "these are ignorant", "they do not know", "they are lying." It says: "that is the extent of their reach in knowledge."

The matter is thus not one of lying but one of range.

The particle min again conveys a part: mina'l-ʿilm — "of knowledge". There is a field called knowledge; they have gone a certain distance into that field and stopped.

And the point at which they stopped was described in the preceding verse: the life of this world. The limit of the wanting has become the limit of the knowing.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the order of the two verses: verse 29 describes the wanting, verse 30 the knowledge. The two are set one after the other. And the relation between them may be this: a person cannot find what he does not seek. The idea of "seeking" in the root of irāda (recorded above) supports this reading — but I do not present it as a claim of certainty.

And the tone of the diagnosis is worth dwelling on. The verse does not humiliate; it measures. To say how far a person has been able to go is a different operation from accusing him of lying. The first is a finding, the second an accusation.

Per the method (Method) this must be added: the verse describes not a community but an attribute — limiting one's wanting to the life of this world, and one's knowledge stopping at that limit. Whoever bears that attribute falls under the ruling.

The sentence is repeated twice: huwa aʿlamu bi-man ḍalla … wa huwa aʿlamu bi-mani'htadā.

The same structure, two directions: the one who strays and the one who finds the way.

And note: the verb of verse 2 comes back here.

Verse 2: mā ضَلَّ ṣāḥibukum — "your companion has not gone astray." Verse 30: bi-man ضَلَّ ʿan sabīlih — "who has strayed from His way."

The same root (ض-ل-ل), at the two ends of the sūra. The verb negated of the messenger in the second verse is asked about the other party in the thirtieth. And the deciding authority changes: who has strayed — it is the Lord who knows this.

This is worth recording as a closing sentence. For twenty-nine verses the sūra has passed judgement about one party; and in closing the block it leaves the judgement to God.

أَعْلَم is an elative: "who knows better / best." And this word will occur three times within two verses (twice at 30, once at 32). In finishing the argument about knowledge, the sūra says three times with whom the knowledge lies.

This repetition is data of the text and is countable.