وَمَا يَنطِقُ عَنِ ٱلْهَوَىٰٓ
Root: ن-ط-ق. This root occurred in the sections al-Dhāriyāt and al-Mursalāt. Its concrete sense: to bring out speech aloud, in articulated form.
- مَنْطِق (manṭiq) — speech, discourse; and from there a method of thought. In the Qurʾān, Solomon's (Sulaymān's) knowing the manṭiqu'l-ṭayr (the language of birds) is said with this word (al-Naml 27/16).
- نِطَاق (niṭāq) — a belt, a band tied about the waist. The connection is not obvious; the lexicographers say the root carries the idea of "binding together, articulating" — sounds become speech when they are articulated, cloth becomes a belt when it is bound about the waist. This derivation is not certain; I transmit it with that reservation.
The choice of the verb. It could have said qāla (he said). It says naṭaqa. The difference: qāla looks to what is said (to the content), naṭaqa looks to the act of speaking (to what comes out of the mouth). The verse does not say "what he says is not craving"; it says "the act of speaking does not arise from craving".
In Arabic naṭaqa bi- (with bāʾ) means "he uttered such and such"; it indicates the object. Here عَن is used. ʿAn in Arabic conveys source and point of departure: coming from something, proceeding from something.
- Had it been "mā yanṭiqu'l-hawā": "he does not utter craving" — that is, the content of what he says is not desire.
- With عَن: "he does not speak out of craving" — that is, the cause, the motor, the point of departure of his speech is not desire.
The second is wider and more definite. For a person may say true things and still be speaking from his desire: someone who tells the truth because his interest requires it has, however true the content, spoken from craving in point of source. The verse closes off the source.
And the next verse will continue the same structure: in huwa illā waḥyun yūḥā — after saying what the source is not, it says what it is.
The first verse: wa'l-najmi idhā هَوَىٰ — "by the star when it falls." The third verse: wa mā yanṭiqu ʿani ٱلْهَوَىٰ — "nor does he speak out of craving."
The same three letters, the same sound, two verses apart. One a verb (it fell), the other a noun (desire).
As recorded above in the section "The structure of the sūra", the majority of the lexicographers gather these two under one root (ه-و-ي) and establish the link thus: hawā is what pulls a person downward. This analysis was given in detail in the section al-Qāriʿa.
| Sound | What it does | |
|---|---|---|
| Verse 1 | hawā | A body falls from above downward |
| Verse 3 | al-hawā | What pulls a man from above downward |
1. An oath upon something that falls (hawā) 2. This man did not fall (mā ḍalla wa mā ghawā) 3. Because his speech does not come from what makes one fall (ʿani'l-hawā) 4. Its source is from above (waḥyun yūḥā)
Four verses are built along a single line of direction. It begins with a body falling downward and ends with a word coming down from above.
I record this as my own reading. The repetition of the sound and the direction of the verbs are data of the text and can be counted; reading the four verses as a single scheme of "direction" is a frame of my own construction. Attention is seen to be drawn to this sharing of sound in the classical commentaries, but I do not present it as transmitted that such a scheme was drawn from it.
The distribution of this word in the Qurʾān was given in the section al-Nāziʿāt; I do not repeat it. The summary: the word is in a negative context almost every time it occurs in the Qurʾān — "Have you seen the one who takes his craving as his god?" (al-Jāthiya 45/23; al-Furqān 25/43); "Do not follow craving, or it will lead you astray from the way of God" (Ṣād 38/26).
"They follow nothing but supposition and what the souls crave (wa mā tahwa'l-anfus)." (53/23)
The same root, in the same sūra, in two opposed positions: the thing that is not the source of the messenger's speech (3), and the thing that is what the one addressed follows (23). The sūra refuses the word on one side and uses it as a diagnosis on the other.