أَفَرَءَيْتُمُ ٱلْمَآءَ ٱلَّذِى تَشْرَبُونَ · ءَأَنتُمْ أَنزَلْتُمُوهُ مِنَ ٱلْمُزْنِ أَمْ نَحْنُ ٱلْمُنزِلُونَ · لَوْ نَشَآءُ جَعَلْنَٰهُ أُجَاجًا فَلَوْلَا تَشْكُرُونَ
A-fa-raʾaytumu'l-māʾa'lladhī tashrabūn · A-antum anzaltumūhu mina'l-muzni am naḥnu'l-munzilūn · Law nashāʾu jaʿalnāhu ujājan fa-lawlā tashkurūn
"Have you seen the water you drink? Did you send it down from the rain-cloud, or are We the senders? Had We willed, We would have made it bitter. Will you not then give thanks?"
The one verb left to man is "to drink"; that is, to consume. The question is built directly upon the verb of sending down: a-antum anzaltumūh.
This is an ascent, and I record it as my own reading: the proofs are ranged in the order of man's diminishing share — from a shared act (the seed), to labour (the crop), to what he does not touch at all (water).
Muzn occurs in the Qurʾān only here. The sense the lexicographers give: a white cloud laden with rain.
In Arabic there is more than one word for cloud — saḥāb (general), ghamām (one that gives shade), muzn (laden with rain). That the verse says muzn and not saḥāb shows that it is looking not at the cloud but at the load it carries.
The Qurʾān uses this word over against sweet water: at Fāṭir 35/12, speaking of two seas, it says hādhā ʿadhbun furātun wa hādhā milḥun ujāj (this one sweet and quenching, this one salt and bitter); the same pair occurs at al-Furqān 25/53 too.
The working of the proof is the same as in the proof of the crop: what could have been and was not. And the "could have been" state here is no distant hypothesis, since most of the planet's water is in fact in that state. I record this as an observation; I am not dressing the verse in a modern piece of knowledge — a person living in the desert needs no measurement to know that salt water cannot be drunk.
| Verse | Call | What is asked |
|---|---|---|
| 57 | tuṣaddiqūn | Confirmation — the work of the mind |
| 62 | tadhakkarūn | Remembering — the work of memory |
| 70 | tashkurūn | Thanks — a giving in return |
The order is worth recording: first acceptance, then remembering, then return. And at the end of the fourth proof it will not be a call but a direct command: fa-sabbiḥ (74).