يَغْفِرْ لَكُمْ ذُنُوبَكُمْ وَيُدْخِلْكُمْ جَنَّٰتٍ تَجْرِى مِن تَحْتِهَا ٱلْأَنْهَٰرُ وَمَسَٰكِنَ طَيِّبَةً فِى جَنَّٰتِ عَدْنٍ ذَٰلِكَ ٱلْفَوْزُ ٱلْعَظِيمُ
Yaghfir lakum dhunūbakum wa yudkhilkum jannātin tajrī min taḥtiha'l-anhāru wa masākina ṭayyibatan fī jannāti ʿadn, dhālika'l-fawzu'l-ʿaẓīm
"(If you do so) He will forgive you your sins and admit you into gardens beneath which rivers flow, and into goodly dwellings in the gardens of ʿAdn. That is the great triumph."
The first verb of the verse is يَغْفِرْ, and its ending has come in the jussive (without a vowel). In Arabic this is the sign showing that a verb is the answer to a condition.
So where is the condition? It has not been stated. There is an elided condition in the sentence: "(if you do this) He forgives."
And the consequence is this: the indicative sentence of the eleventh verse acquires here, retrospectively, the function of a condition. That is, the grammar itself confirms that the preceding verse has the sense of a command or a condition.
This is a piece of evidence that settles the discussion above: had the sentence tuʾminūna wa tujāhidūna been a mere statement, a jussive verb would not have come after it. The jussive verb shows that a demand precedes it.
| # | Return | Its character |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | مَغْفِرَة — the forgiveness of sins | The cleansing of the past |
| 2 | جَنَّٰت تَجْرِى — gardens with rivers | A place |
| 3 | مَسَٰكِن طَيِّبَة فِى جَنَّٰتِ عَدْنٍ — goodly dwellings in the gardens of ʿAdn | Settlement |
The order is meaningful: first the wiping out of the debt, then the giving of the place, then a position in that place in which one will come to rest.
غَفَرَ — root غ-ف-ر: to cover, to close over. And its concrete source: mighfar — the war-helmet that covers the head. Forgiveness, then, is not treating the sin as non-existent but covering it over.
And there is a striking closeness here: the root ك-ف-ر is also "to cover." This was analysed at al-Baqara 2/6. The two roots state the same deed but their objects differ: kufr covers over the truth, ghufrān covers over the sin. The same movement, in two different directions.
Derivatives: sukūn (motionlessness), sakīna (inner stillness), sākin, and مِسْكِين (miskīn — the idea in the root of the word: one in a condition of being unable to move, unable to rise from his place).
A maskan, then, is not a "house"; it is the place where one comes to rest. At the centre of the word is the ending of movement.
And in the context of the sūra this choice is worth noting. What was there throughout the sūra? Standing in rank, fighting, striving, spending wealth and life, carrying out a trade, help and victory. All of it is movement.
I present this link as a reading; but the choice of word supports it. In describing the garden a word such as "palace", "pavilion" or "station" could have been used. The word used is the one whose root is "motionlessness".
طَيِّبَة — root ط-ي-ب: pleasant, clean, agreeable to the heart. The Qurʾān uses this root of food (ṭayyibāt), of speech (al-kalimu'ṭ-ṭayyib) and of life (ḥayātan ṭayyiba, al-Naḥl 16/97) alike. The idea common to the word: acceptable, settling well within.
عَدْن — root ع-د-ن: to stay permanently in a place, to settle. From the same root comes مَعْدِن (maʿdin, a mine) — the place of a mine is fixed, it cannot be moved. Jannātu ʿadn, then: the gardens of permanence.
فَوْز — root ف-و-ز. And the root has an interesting double aspect: both to be saved and to attain what one desires.
From the same root comes مَفَازَة, and this word is used both for "a place of deliverance" and — strikingly — for "the desert". One of the classical explanations is this: because coming out of the desert alive is a deliverance, the dangerous crossing has been named with an optimistic name.
The two aspects of the word overlap with the content of the verse: in the tenth verse the first property of the trade was to save (tunjīkum); here at the close comes fawz — both deliverance and gain. The exchange is thereby completed.