اتَّخَذُوا أَيْمَانَهُمْ جُنَّةً فَصَدُّوا عَنْ سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ ۚ إِنَّهُمْ سَاءَ مَا كَانُوا يَعْمَلُونَ
"They have taken their oaths as a shield and turned others from the way of God. Evil indeed is what they have been doing!"
The root ي-م-ن. At the centre of the root is the right hand: yamīn is the right hand. From the same root come yumn (blessing, good fortune) and maymana (the right side).
That the oath carries this name comes from the Arabs' manner of swearing: the parties would strike their right hands together, or clasp hands. That is, yamīn, in the word's own logic, is the handshake. The sealing of a word by a physical movement.
This makes the word's use here sharper: an oath is in fact an instrument for establishing a bond. It binds two parties to one another. In the verse it is being used as an instrument for separating.
The root ج-ن-ن was fully analysed at al-Baqara 2/25; I do not repeat it here. The centre of the root: to cover, to conceal. Its derivatives are surprisingly wide, and all of them turn around "invisibility":
- janīn — the one covered in the womb
- jinn — the being that is not seen
- majnūn — one whose reason is covered
- mijann — a shield (the thing one hides behind)
- janna — the garden that covers the ground with its trees
Here the shield branch of the root is used. جُنَّة (junna) means a shield — in the same field of meaning as mijann.
A shield is an instrument of defence. It does not attack; it protects. One hides behind it. And most importantly: the one holding the shield does not become invisible — the shield does not conceal its holder, it stops the blow coming at him.
This distinction matters. The verse does not say "they took their oaths as a curtain"; it says "as a shield". A curtain conceals; a shield meets. That is, it is not that the hypocrites are invisible — they are visible, but they stop with an oath the questioning that comes at them.
Normally the function of an oath is this: because a word may be untrustworthy, a guarantee is added to the word. The oath is the weight placed behind the word.
When it is used as a shield this relation is reversed. The oath no longer supports the word; it blocks the question. When someone asks "is it really so?", the answer is not a proof but an oath. And an oath, by definition, cannot be questioned — because to question it would be to accuse the other of lying.
So the oath works by making questioning socially costly. This is exactly what a shield is: it is not itself a proof, but it makes asking for a proof impossible.
The same expression occurs once more in the Qurʾān. Al-Mujādala 58/16: "They have taken their oaths as a shield and turned others from the way of God; for them there is a humiliating punishment." The first sentence is word for word the same as this verse; the difference lies only at the end. Al-Mujādala ends with an announcement of punishment, al-Munāfiqūn with a reproach.
A sharing of this degree between two sūras suggests that there are other links between them as well — and indeed there are, and they will be taken up at the fifth verse.
| Reading | Its meaning | Who is affected |
|---|---|---|
| Intransitive (lāzim) | "They themselves turned away from the way of God" | Only themselves |
| Transitive (mutaʿaddī, with its object dropped) | "They held people back from the way of God" | Others |
In the classical commentaries the second sense is mostly preferred, and the ground is the context: if an oath is being used as a shield, there is a conflict at hand; and a shield, while it protects its holder, also holds an area. Moreover the rest of the verse says "what they have been doing" — an activity is being spoken of.
In my judgement the two do not exclude one another, and the dropping of the word's object is probably deliberate. The finding recorded for yurāʾūna at al-Māʿūn 107/6 works here too: the dropping of the object widens the scope. They themselves turn from the way, and they also hold others back. This is a preference; it is not binding.
سَبِيل — root س-ب-ل: a road that stretches out. Sabīl is a road that is travelled on, open and definite. In the word's concrete sense there is a flowing — isbāl is a thing's hanging down and extending.
سَاءَ — one of the Arabic verbs of blame: "how evil it is". In the same function as biʾsa. At al-Jumuʿa 62/5 biʾsa mathalu'l-qawm occurred.
مَا كَانُوا يَعْمَلُونَ — kāna + the imperfect: a habit that has been going on. Not a single event, but what has come to be done.
And note: the verdict is passed on deed, not on belief. The verse does not say "how evil is what they believe"; it says "how evil is what they do".
This accords with the sūra's general method. In the first verse speech was taken out of being a measure; in the second verse the verdict is bound directly to the act.
Instruments that block questioning. The side of the verse that works most today is what the shield does: it offers no proof; it makes asking for a proof costly.
This mechanism is not limited to oaths. In an argument, an answer by the party being questioned that turns the questioning itself into a moral offence does the same work. "Are you accusing me of lying?", "Are you questioning my intention?", "How can you not believe this?" — all of these are shields. They do not answer; they make the question invalid.
The verse's diagnosis is this: the person holding the shield is not winning the argument; he is ending it. And ending is not winning.
The inflation of the oath. The second side has to do with the oath itself. The more often an oath is used in a community, the less weight it carries. An oath's working depends on its being rare. An oath used as a shield wears away both its own function and the function of every oath in the community.