al-Wāqiʿa 56:25-26

Lā yasmaʿūna fīhā laghwan wa lā taʾthīmā · Illā qīlan salāman salāmā

"There they hear no idle talk, nor any word that brings sin. Only a saying: peace, peace."

These two verses are the last two of the table of the sābiqūn, and the way they end the table is striking.

Let us look at the table as a whole:

The table closes with hearing. And what is enumerated in the last two verses is not an object: it is a sound-environment.

I record this as an observation and add the following as my own reading: all the objects enumerated fill a place; but what makes living in a place bearable or unbearable is most often not the objects but the speech that is spoken there. The table has put this last.

The description the lexicographers give: speech or action that is not counted, that goes for nothing. Laghwa'sh-shayʾu — it became worthless, it was not counted.

Its use with regard to birds is recorded: laghā'ṭ-ṭayru — the bird chirped. An utterance, that is, that carries no meaning and is only sound.

And this detail is worth recording: from the same root comes lugha (language). The lexicographers record this relation and explain it thus: to one who does not know a language, speech in that language is only sound. I relay this explanation as the lexicographers give it, not as a settled etymological judgement.

The word's place within the Qurʾān: at al-Muʾminūn 23/3 an attribute of the believers is wa'lladhīna hum ʿani'l-laghwi muʿriḍūn (those who turn away from idle talk), and at al-Furqān 25/72 wa idhā marrū bi'l-laghwi marrū kirāmā (those who pass by idle talk with dignity).

Laghw, that is, is what is avoided in this world; its being named as what is absent in the Garden is therefore a recompense. In this world one had to turn away; there, there is nothing to turn away from.

The pattern matters: a verbal noun of Form II (aththama → taʾthīm). This form adds transitivity. The word does not mean "sin", that is, but "to make sinful" or "to charge with sin".

Two readings are transmitted:

I make no choice between the two; the pattern is open to both and both are mentioned in the classical exegeses.

The root أ-ث-م. The root sense the lexicographers record: to slow, to lag behind. Athima — he fell behind; al-āthim — a slow camel.

From this comes the description of ithm: what holds a person back from good. The word carries not a list of prohibitions but a description of being slowed down.

لَغْو and تَأْثِيم are not two words chosen at random; they set up an order:

The verse removes two thresholds at once, that is: neither speech that serves no purpose, nor speech that does harm.

And the order runs from below upward: first the lighter, then the heavier. In Arabic this arrangement is called taraqqī and it strengthens the negation — if not even the light one is there, the heavy one certainly is not.

قِيل — one of the verbal nouns of the verb qāla. This verb has several verbal nouns in Arabic (qawl, qīl, maqāla), and qīl is rarely used.

The exception: the grammarians generally count this an istithnāʾ munqaṭiʿ — that is, what is excepted is not of the same kind as that from which it is excepted. Laghw and taʾthīm are one kind, salām another. In that case illā means "only, but", and it makes not a limitation but a substitution.

سَلَٰمًا سَلَٰمًا — the repetition. The word comes twice with no conjunction between.

In Arabic this repetition has several functions: pervasiveness, continuity, or reciprocity. All three are possible here and I make no choice. Only this may be recorded: the repetition removes the impression that the word is said once and done with.

The root was dealt with in the preceding sūra in this commentary. At al-Ḥashr 59/23 al-Salām occurred as a name of God, and the root sense recorded there was: to be free of defect and of corruption, to be sound and whole.

This sense sits directly in the context of the verse. Before salām is a word of well-wishing it is a word for a state: the condition of a thing that has taken no harm.

The one word the people of the Garden hear, read by its root sense, is therefore not a wish but a declaration: nothing here is spoiling.

I give this reading as my own; the word's common use (greeting) holds in this verse too, and the classical exegeses understand it predominantly in that direction.

The link with Maryam 19/62: lā yasmaʿūna fīhā laghwan illā salāmā. Almost the same sentence. The difference in al-Wāqiʿa is the addition of taʾthīm and the repetition of salām.

And the word will return once more within the sūra: at 56/91, fa-salāmun laka min aṣḥābi'l-yamīn — for those on the right. Salām, that is, is the shared word of two groups in this sūra.