al-Najm 53:43-44

Wa annahu huwa aḍḥaka wa abkā · Wa annahu huwa amāta wa aḥyā "And that it is He who makes to laugh and to weep. And that it is He who gives death and gives life."

Four verbs, all four in the same pattern: أَفْعَلَ (ifʿāl, Form IV).

And the work of Form IV in Arabic is this: to make a verb transitive, that is, to have another do it.

Now what the verse does becomes visible.

Laughing and weeping are the two acts a person feels most to be his own. When a person laughs he thinks that he does the laughing. And so when he weeps.

By carrying the verb one form upward the verse changes its owner. The person laughs (ḍaḥika) — but the one who makes him laugh is another (aḍḥaka).

And this is not a claim about personality but a finding about cause. The verse does not say "you did not laugh"; it says "you did not set up the cause that produced your laughing."

I record this as my own reading; the difference of form is a grammatical datum and is beyond dispute.

And the order of the four verbs is striking: laughing and weeping first, then death and life.

The expected order would be the reverse. Death and life are far greater matters than laughing and weeping. To go from the great to the small is a more customary arrangement.

The verse goes from the small to the great.

I offer a reading and state that it is my own.

Over death and life a person has no claim; no one says "I gave birth to myself". The forty-fourth verse says something the one addressed will accept in any case.

The forty-third verse, on the other hand, says the disputable thing. Laughing and weeping are acts a person counts as his own. The sūra puts the disputable first and then supports it with the indisputable.

This is a known order in the arrangement of proofs: what is hard to accept is said first, and what is easy to accept comes after it and carries the first.

I present this as an inference, not as transmitted.

I wish to add one further observation, and this too is my own reading.

Laughing and weeping are the two acts a person governs least by his will. One decides to walk, one decides to speak; but a real laugh or a real weeping cannot be produced by decision. Their imitation can be made; they themselves cannot.

Both are a response to something. A piece of news comes, a sight is seen, a word is heard — and the response comes of itself. A person is not the subject of the response but its place.

The Form IV of the verse names exactly this. The verbs are ascribed not to the person but to what gives rise to the act.

I record this as an observation; this assessment of the relation of laughing and weeping to the will is my interpretation and is not transmitted.

And these two roots will come back at the end of the sūra. This is the sūra's clearest internal link.

Verse 43: wa annahu huwa أَضْحَكَ وَأَبْكَىٰ — "it is He who makes to laugh and to weep." Verse 60: wa تَضْحَكُونَ وَلَا تَبْكُونَ — "and you laugh and do not weep."

The same two roots, seventeen verses apart, in diametrically opposite positions.

And this is the real matter in the second picture: the balance has been broken.

The forty-third verse gives the two verbs as equal: the one who makes to laugh and the one who makes to weep. The sixtieth affirms one and negates the other: you laugh but you do not weep.

The sūra says, that is, that of the two responses given to man he uses one and does not use the other.

This connection is established by the sūra itself — the repetition of the two roots is a countable datum. The interpretation of a "broken balance" between them is my reading, and I record it as my own.

The root ض-ح-ك occurred in this commentary in the sections ʿAbasa and al-Muṭaffifīn. In al-Muṭaffifīn laughing was treated in the context of mockery (83/29: kānū mina'lladhīna āmanū yaḍḥakūn), and at the end of that sūra it was reversed (83/34).

The root ب-ك-ي, on the other hand, occurs here for the first time in this commentary. The concrete sense of the root: to shed tears, to weep. Derivatives: bukāʾ — weeping; bakiyy — one who weeps much. The Qurʾān uses this last pattern: "They fall down in prostration and weep" (Maryam 19/58: wa بُكِيّاً).