al-Ḥadīd 57:29

Li-allā yaʿlama ahlu'l-kitābi allā yaqdirūna ʿalā shayʾin min faḍli'llāhi wa anna'l-faḍla bi-yadi'llāhi yuʾtīhi man yashāʾ; wa'llāhu dhu'l-faḍli'l-ʿaẓīm "So that the People of the Book may know that they have no power over anything of God's bounty; that the bounty is in God's hand, and He gives it to whom He wills. God is the possessor of great bounty."

The closing verse of the sūra and one of the most grammatically debated sentences in the Qurʾān.

The sentence begins with لِّئَلَّا يَعْلَمَ. Literally: "so that they may not know."

But what follows in the verse makes this reading impossible: "so that they may not know… that the bounty is in God's hand." This is meaningless — the Qurʾān does not want a piece of knowledge to remain unknown.

The widespread solution is this: the لا here is zāʾida — that is, a particle inserted for emphasis that conveys no negation. On this construal the sense is: "so that they may know."

This usage is recognised in Arabic and other instances of it are pointed out in the Qurʾān:

• "What kept you from prostrating?" (al-Aʿrāf 7/12) — literally "allā tasjuda", "from your not prostrating". The lā there too is counted redundant.
• "…so that people may have no argument against you" (al-Baqara 2/150) — here, by contrast, it is a real negation.

A second solution is also found in the sources: the lā is a real negation and the sentence attaches to the preceding verse. The sense would then be: "…(this bounty was given) so that the People of the Book should not remain unable to know that they can possess nothing of God's bounty" — that is, an indirect affirmation.

A third reading: the lā carries a negation in the sense of "let them not suppose", and the sentence is understood as "so that they may not suppose the bounty is their own monopoly."

In this commentary I take the first solution as the basis — that the lā is redundant and the sense is "so that they may know". This is the reading most widely accepted in the classical sources. The preference is not binding.

يقدرون — root ق-د-ر, taken up in the second verse: to measure, to apportion, to have power over.

Here the sense is: to have power over, to dispose of. "They have no power over even a part of the bounty" — that is, they have no authority to distribute the bounty, to restrict it, to hold it as a monopoly.

شَىْءٍ indefinite and in a negative sentence: "over anything of it."

Why does the sūra close with this sentence?

In the preceding verse (28) a promise was given: a double mercy, a light, forgiveness. And the addressee of that promise — on the first reading — were those of the People of the Book who believe.

Such a promise naturally raises an objection: "prophethood and bounty were ours; why has it been given to another?"

The Qurʾān records this objection elsewhere: "Or do they envy people for what God has given them of His bounty?" (al-Nisāʾ 4/54). And at al-Baqara 2/109: in the face of envy, pardon was commanded.

The last verse answers this objection directly: the bounty is no one's monopoly.

And it does so in two steps: 1. Negative: they have no power over the bounty. 2. Positive: the bounty is in God's hand; He gives it to whom He wills.

Root: ف-ض-ل — taken up in verse 21: to increase, to be in excess. Faḍl is the surplus added on top of what is required.

The word occurs three times in this verse and becomes one of the last words of the sūra: faḍli'llāh, al-faḍl, dhu'l-faḍli'l-ʿaẓīm.

And it had occurred three times in verse 21 as well: dhālika faḍlu'llāhi yuʾtīhi man yashāʾ; wa'llāhu dhu'l-faḍli'l-ʿaẓīm.

The last sentence of the two verses is word for word the same: "God is the possessor of great bounty." The sūra uses this sentence twice, in verses 21 and 29.

And both occurrences do the same work: after a language of deserving, they prevent the deserving from becoming absolute.

• In verse 21 the command to race was given; then, by saying "that is God's bounty", the prize of the race was taken out of the category of desert.
• In verse 29 a promise was given; then the same sentence comes.

Across the sūra this movement recurs three times:

This is the most consistent weave of the sūra: every distinction is bounded immediately afterwards by a note.

يد — hand. This is one of the mutashābih expressions in the Qurʾān (those whose meaning cannot be determined with certainty), and the position recorded in the matter of istiwāʾ (57/4) holds here too.

In Arabic the idiom bi-yadi fulān is well established in the sense of "in his disposal, in his hand, within his authority", and it is used in this sense in everyday speech. The English expression "in his hands" is the same.

In this commentary the expression is read within the limit set by al-Shūrā 42/11, and the theological dispute is not entered.

The sūra had begun with the word مُلْك (dominion) — more exactly, twice, in the second and fifth verses: "To Him belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth."

And it ends with the word فَضْل (bounty): "The bounty is in God's hand."

The two words hold the two ends of the sūra. And both say the same thing: what is in your hands is not yours.

The sūra set up this finding first through property (7, 10, 11), then through force (25), and at the very end through spiritual standing (29). Three domains, one idea.

Reading the sūra from beginning to end, several weaves become visible. I record them separately.