al-Najm 53:39-41

Wa an laysa li'l-insāni illā mā saʿā · Wa anna saʿyahu sawfa yurā · Thumma yujzāhu'l-jazāʾa'l-awfā "And that man shall have only what he strives for. And that his striving will be seen. Then he will be requited for it with the most complete requital."

Root: س-ع-ي. This root was analysed in the sections al-Layl and ʿAbasa and put to work in al-Ḥadīd and al-Ghāshiya. And in all four, precisely this verse was given as an example. I do not repeat it; the summary:

Its concrete sense is to walk fast, to go at a pace close to running. The state between walking and running. From there the word widened in Arabic to mean to strive, to labour, to run after some business — the English "to run after" carries both of these senses, which makes it a good rendering. The choice of the word is meaningful. It could have said ʿamal (work), fiʿl (act), kasb (acquisition). It says saʿy — a state of being in movement, in haste, in pursuit of something.

Now something can be added to the finding made in the section on al-Layl, and here lies the real matter.

The verse does not say "man shall have only what he did." It says "man shall have only what he strove for."

And the difference is real.

ʿAmal (work) conveys an outcome: what came about. Saʿy conveys a movement: the labour expended.

A person's striving and the outcome of that striving do not always coincide:

• A farmer ploughs his field, sows, waters — and hail falls. The striving complete, the outcome nil.
• A person nurses a sick man, labours day and night — and the sick man dies. The striving complete, no outcome.
• Another comes into an inheritance without doing anything. No striving, an outcome.

Outcomes depend on hundreds of factors not in a person's hand. And a reckoning set up on what is not in a person's hand would not be just.

The verse shifts the measure from outcome to striving. And this is the most just construction of the principle of requital: a person is responsible for what he can control.

I record this finding as my own reading; the sense of the word (running, striving) is a lexical datum and has been recorded in four separate sections. What is new is the tying of this distinction between saʿy and ʿamal to the principle of requital.

And one further note is needed. This reading does not mean that the quality of the striving is unimportant. This point was treated in the section al-Ghāshiya:

al-Isrāʾ 17/19 sets a condition on striving: "Whoever wants the hereafter and strives for it with the striving due to it, being a believer — theirs is a striving that finds its return" — striving alone is not enough, that is; it must be fitted to its target.

The section on al-Ghāshiya also compared it with the verse of al-Layl, "your strivings are scattered" (92/4: inna saʿyakum la-shattā): "In al-Layl the strivings were shattā: scattered, separate from one another, not going to the same place."

The Qurʾān's ruling on saʿy is thus in two parts: you have only your striving (al-Najm 53/39), and where your striving goes matters (al-Layl 92/4; al-Isrāʾ 17/19).

The sentence is again built with a pattern of restriction, this time with laysa … illā.

And the restriction has two directions — both should be recorded:

The same sentence is both a limit and a guarantee. And which of the two comes forward depends on the position of the one reading it: a limit for one who expects a windfall, a guarantee for one whose labour has gone unrewarded.

I record this as an observation.

سَوْفَ is a particle of the future in Arabic and, compared with sa- (the near future), conveys the distant future. Not "soon" but "later, one day."

يُرَىٰ — passive: "will be seen." By whom it will be seen is not stated.

And the verb is again ر-أ-ي. The sixth and last use in the sūra.

Let us complete the sūra's series of seeing:

And the end of the series is striking: the sūra begins with what one person saw and ends at a point where everyone is seen.

In the first five the verb is active (someone sees). In the sixth it is passive: it is seen.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the series of verbs: the sūra uses the verb of seeing first as a privilege (the messenger saw), then as an incapacity (the man cannot see), and finally as an exposure (everyone's striving will be seen).

And what the passive pattern does here matters. Had it said "God will see his striving", only an observation would have been recorded. With yurā, the striving is made visible — brought out, put on display.

In the section al-Takwīr this was treated as the opening of the records (81/10: wa idha'l-ṣuḥufu nushirat), and the finding recorded there fits here: "the veil between what is seen and what is recorded is lifted."

The particle ثُمَّ conveys in Arabic a sequence with an interval: "then, after a while."

And this establishes a distinction in the word order:

The seeing and the requital are not the same moment. First the striving is brought out, then the requital is given.

And this sequence is a known condition of justice: judgement is given after the evidence has been produced. The verse lodges this sequence inside the grammar.

I record this as an observation; that the particle thumma conveys an interval is a grammatical datum.

Jazāʾ is a neutral word in Arabic: requital. Not punishment (the sense the borrowed word has taken on in Turkish); the requital of the good as much as of the bad. The Qurʾān shows this explicitly: "Is the requital (jazāʾu) of goodness anything but goodness?" (al-Raḥmān 55/60) — this verse was treated in the section al-Raḥmān.

ٱلْأَوْفَىٰ — an elative from the root wafāʾ: "the most complete, the most entire."

And as recorded above, the same root was used of Abraham at verse 37: alladhī waffā — who fulfilled completely.

A man did completely; his requital will be complete too. Two words four verses apart, from the same root.

I record this as an observation — the repetition of the root is a countable datum, while the establishing of a deliberate relation between them is my inference.