لَا يَسْتَوِىٓ أَصْحَٰبُ ٱلنَّارِ وَأَصْحَٰبُ ٱلْجَنَّةِ أَصْحَٰبُ ٱلْجَنَّةِ هُمُ ٱلْفَآئِزُونَ
"The people of the Fire and the people of the Garden are not equal. The people of the Garden — it is they who attain deliverance."
Root: س-و-ي. The concrete sense is to level, to make smooth. Sawwā — he straightened, he balanced. The description of the soul with sawwāhā at al-Shams 91/7 and fa-sawwāka at al-Infiṭār 82/7 are the structure-building side of this root.
Istiwāʾ (Form VIII) is two things' coming to the same level. That is, lā yastawī says something narrower than "they are different": they do not meet on the same scale.
The Qurʾān uses this pattern in several places, and in all of them there is a common function: to report that two things habitually compared are beyond comparison.
Lā yastawī aṣḥābu'n-nār and aṣḥābu'l-janna — the two are mentioned together. Aṣḥābu'l-jannati humu'l-fāʾizūn — a ruling is given about one of them only.
No separate sentence of judgement is set up for the people of the Fire. In the second sentence only the people of the Garden come back.
I record this as an observation about style: the balance of the sentence has been left broken, and the brokenness carries a meaning. Once it has been said "they are not equal", there is no need to say anything about the people of the Fire; what is not said has already been made clear by the repetition of the positive side.
And the repetition itself is meaningful. Aṣḥābu'l-janna occurs twice. That the noun should be repeated when a pronoun could have been used (hum humu'l-fāʾizūn) is a technique of emphasis and of fixing in Arabic.
Root: ص-ح-ب. Ṣuḥba — companionship, friendship; and the detail recorded by the lexicographers: in the root there is continuity and standing together. To be the ṣāḥib of a thing is to accompany it.
For this reason ownership too is expressed in Arabic with the word ṣāḥib: the thing owned is what accompanies the person.
The use of the word here is striking for this reason: the verse does not say "those who enter the Fire" or "those who are put into the Garden". It says "the companions of the Fire", "the companions of the Garden". That is, not a place but a relation of accompanying is set up — and accompanying conveys not a single event but continuity.
Root: ف-و-ز. The definition the lexicographers give has two parts: to reach what is sought and to be saved from what is feared. Without both together, fawz is not complete.
From the same root the word مَفَازَة is worth recording: it means both "a place of deliverance" and "desert". The lexicographers explain this second use either by tafaʾʾul (counting a thing auspicious, giving a good name to what is dangerous) or by the sense "the place from which one is delivered if one gets across". I give these explanations in the form in which they are transmitted; I make no preference between them.
A link within the sūra — with al-mufliḥūn in 59/9:
| Verse | Word | Root | Concrete sense |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9 | al-mufliḥūn | ف-ل-ح | To split and come out (the farmer's splitting of the soil) |
| 20 | al-fāʾizūn | ف-و-ز | To be saved from danger and reach what is sought |
Both words are rendered in English as "those who attain deliverance", but they come from two different images: the one a seed coming out of the soil, the other a traveller who comes off the road alive.
And their places are separate too: falāḥ was used, in the ninth verse, of those guarded from miserliness — that is, of an inner working in this world. Fawz is here, in the verse that reports the outcome. The one names the process, the other the arrival. I record this link as my own reading.