al-Najm 53:42

Wa anna ilā rabbika'l-muntahā "And that the final end is to your Lord."

In the section al-Nāziʿāt this verse was already entered in a table of comparison (on the occasion of al-Nāziʿāt 79/44), and the grammatical finding recorded there holds here as well:

The word order of the sentence is worth recording. "Ilā rabbika" (to your Lord) has been brought forward; muntahā left to the end. In Arabic an element brought forward from its normal place conveys restriction.

The sentence means, that is, not "the end is to your Lord" but "the end is to your Lord alone."

This link was made above in the section on verses 13-15; I complete it here.

The word ٱلْمُنتَهَىٰ occurs twice in the sūra, and twenty-eight verses lie between them:

The difference of particle is worth dwelling on. ʿInda conveys a static position: being beside a thing. Ilā conveys direction: going towards a thing.

The fourteenth verse stands in a place; the forty-second goes towards one.

And I record as my own reading: the sūra uses the word "end" first in the name of a place and then gives it as a direction. The Lote Tree is a boundary stone — one stops there. The Lord is not a boundary but an arrival.

The repetition of the word is data of the text and can be counted; this relation between the two verses is a reading of my own.

And something small but important happens in the word order: in the middle of the eleven anna clauses there is a sudden shift to the second person singular.

Wa anna ilā رَبِّكَ 'l-muntahā — "to your Lord".

There is no such address before or after it: 38-41 are general rulings (man, striving, requital); from 43 on it is the third person (wa annahu huwa). This verse alone, in the middle of the list, turns to the second person.

I offer a reading and state that it is my own. The list is a series of rulings, and rulings are abstract. In the very middle of the series the forty-second verse attaches the ruling to a person: your Lord. What stands behind all the items of the list is not a distant principle but the addressee's own Lord.

And the verse-ending may support this — rabbika'l-muntahā fits the -ā sound. The change of address may therefore have a technical cause too.

I make no definite claim of intent; the change of pronoun is data of the text.

And there is this too: the same second-person singular address will come once more at the end of the list — fa-bi-ayyi ālāʾi رَبِّكَ tatamārā (55). The list is thus centred by a "your Lord" and closed by a "your Lord".

This is a datum verifiable within the sūra.