al-Qalam 68:48-50

Fa'ṣbir li-ḥukmi rabbika wa lā takun ka-ṣāḥibi'l-ḥūt, idh nādā wa huwa makẓūm — lawlā an tadārakahu niʿmatun min rabbihī la-nubidha bi'l-ʿarāʾi wa huwa madhmūm — fa'jtabāhu rabbuhū fa-jaʿalahu mina'l-ṣāliḥīn "So be patient for the judgement of your Lord; and be not like the man of the fish, when he called out while he was choked with grief. Had a favour from his Lord not reached him, he would have been cast onto the bare ground, blamed. But his Lord chose him and made him one of the righteous."

Towards the end of the sūra a prophet is suddenly named. And not as a positive example.

صَبَرَ — root ص-ب-ر. And the concrete sense of the root is to hold a thing in a place, to confine it: ṣabara nafsahu — he held himself back. Ṣabr is also the name of the bitter plant called aloes.

So patience is, at the root of the word, an act of holding — not a passive enduring but an active restraining.

لِحُكْمِ رَبِّكَ — "for the judgement of your Lord".

And the preposition is worth noting: li- (for, towards). Not "be patient until your Lord's judgement" but "be patient for your Lord's judgement."

So patience is not a waiting but a turning towards. The person is not waiting for time to pass; he is standing facing a judgement.

حُكْم — root ح-ك-م. Treated at the thirty-sixth verse: the original sense of the root is to bridle, to rein in.

And a link within the sūra, as my own reading: in the thirty-sixth verse the other side was asked "how do you judge?" In the forty-eighth the Prophet is told "be patient for the judgement of your Lord."

Two sides, two different positions before the same root.

And now the most striking thing in the verse: a prophet is named as a negative example.

This is rare in the Qurʾān and must be read carefully.

صَاحِب — root ص-ح-ب. Treated in the discussion of al-Takwīr: to be together, to keep company.

And the construct is odd: ṣāḥib al-ḥūt — "the companion/owner of the fish". The Qurʾān names the same man elsewhere as Dhū'l-Nūn (the man of the fish) (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/87) and also by his name (Jonah, Yūnus).

Here the name is not given. Only the attribute.

I think this is a fine point, as my own reading: when a negative example is given, no name is named. In the fifty-first verse it will be said to the Prophet "they would almost fell you with their looks" — and there too the accusers go unnamed. The sūra names situations, not persons.

حُوت — fish. And the sūra's first letter was ن. That the word nūn means "fish" in Arabic was recorded in the discussion of the first verse — and it was stated there that this explanation was not adopted.

Still, that the sūra opens with nūn and comes close to closing with ḥūt is worth recording as an observation. I do not present it as exegesis; I note the overlap between the words.

نَادَىٰ — root ن-د-و/ن-د-ي. The same root as the tanādaw of the twenty-first verse: to call out.

And what he called is not said here. The Qurʾān says it elsewhere:

"And remember Dhū'l-Nūn, when he went off in anger… He called out in the darknesses: 'There is no god but You; glory be to You; I have indeed been one of the wrongdoers.'" (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/87)

And the last part of this sentence coincides exactly with the narrative in Sūrat al-Qalam:

The two sentences are almost identical. And both belong to two different stories named in the same sūra.

I record this as an observation; I make no claim that there is a deliberate reference from one text to the other. But the overlap is a datum of the text and it is meaningful for the sūra as a whole: the men in the narrative and Jonah frame the same sentence.

مَكْظُوم — root ك-ظ-م. And this is one of the loveliest words in the sūra.

The concrete sense of the root: kaẓama'l-qirba — he filled the waterskin and tied its mouth. A vessel, that is, filled up and stopped.

Its derivatives:

• كَظِيم (kaẓīm) — one who has buried his grief inside. The Qurʾān uses it of Jacob (Yaʿqūb): "His eyes turned white from grief; and he was filled within (kaẓīm)" (Yūsuf 12/84).
• كَاظِم (kāẓim) — one who swallows his anger. The Qurʾān names it as a quality of those who guard themselves: al-kāẓimīna'l-ghayẓ — "those who swallow their anger" (Āl ʿImrān 3/134).
• كِظَامَة (kiẓāma) — the tie that binds the mouth of a thing.

And now the picture of the word is complete: a waterskin filled to the brim and tied shut. There is pressure inside; but it cannot get out.

In the discussion of al-Mulk the word ghayẓ was treated and this was recorded there: "Ghayẓ is swallowed anger. The Qurʾān records this plainly: one of the qualities of those who guard themselves is al-kāẓimīna'l-ghayẓ — 'those who swallow their anger'."

And now a tension appears and must be handled honestly:

In one place the Qurʾān praises "swallowing one's anger" (Āl ʿImrān 3/134); here a prophet who "called out while choked with anger" is named as a negative example.

This is not a contradiction, but it needs explaining.

The difference lies not in the swallowing of the anger but in what is done after the anger has been swallowed.

And I write this as my own reading: kaẓm is to fill a waterskin and tie it. A waterskin holds out only so far. The man in Āl ʿImrān swallows his anger and stays; Jonah swallows his anger and goes.

So the verse takes aim not at the emotion itself but at the act the emotion displaced.

And the command of the verse confirms this: fa'ṣbir — be patient. Patience is not the tying of the waterskin; it is staying in place while it is tied.

Sūrat al-Qalam does not tell the story; it refers to it. The pieces are given in other places in the Qurʾān.

The passages I am sure of:

• "And remember Dhū'l-Nūn…" (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/87-88) — his going, his prayer in the darknesses, his rescue.
• "And Jonah too was one of the messengers… The fish swallowed him… We cast him onto the bare ground, and he was sick" (in the frame of al-Ṣāffāt 37/139-145). And there this expression occurs: fa-nabadhnāhu bi'l-ʿarāʾi wa huwa saqīm.
• "If only there had been a town that believed… except the people of Jonah" (Yūnus 10/98).

Yūnus 10/98 is worth noting: the people of Jonah are named in the Qurʾān as the only community that believed before the punishment came. That is, the people the prophet left behind did believe.

This changes the whole of the story, as my own reading: Jonah's reason for leaving was his conviction that his people would not be set right. The conviction turned out to be wrong.

And from here comes the lesson the sūra gives the Prophet: your conviction about the state of the other side cannot be a ground for leaving. You are not the one who knows the outcome.

نَبَذَ — root ن-ب-ذ. This root was treated in the discussion of al-Humaza (104/4); I do not repeat it here. In summary of the finding there: "to throw a thing away because one counts it worthless, to fling it aside as of no account… The distinguishing feature of the word is that it places a value judgement inside the act of throwing. Not every throwing is nabz; nabz is the counting of the thing thrown as useless."

And al-Ṣāffāt 37/145 was in the list recorded in the discussion of al-Humaza: "We cast him onto the bare open ground."

Now the two verses have to be set side by side, because there is a difference of one word and that word changes everything:

The two verses describe the same scene but the last word differs. And the moods of the verbs differ too.

In al-Ṣāffāt the event happened: he was cast out, he was sick. In al-Qalam the event did not happen: he would have been cast out, blamed — but a favour from his Lord reached him.

So the two verses do not contradict; they describe two different scenarios:

• What happened: he was cast onto the bare ground, sick. (al-Ṣāffāt)
• What did not happen: he would have been cast onto the bare ground, blamed. (al-Qalam)

What makes the difference is the conditional clause of the forty-ninth verse: lawlā an tadārakahu niʿmatun min rabbihī — "had a favour from his Lord not reached him."

I offer this reading as my own reading; but the difference of mood between the two verses (perfect / condition with lawlā) is a datum of the text, and some of the classical exegetes too draw this distinction.

تَدَٰرَكَ — root د-ر-ك. To reach, to arrive, to overtake. Idrāk — to grasp (the mind reaching a thing); darak — the bottom of a thing.

In Form VI (tadāraka): to arrive one after another, to reach just in time. There is a picture in the word of arriving at the last moment.

And a nearness of words: the istidrāj (د-ر-ج) of the forty-fourth verse and the tadāruk (د-ر-ك) here are from different roots — their last letters differ. They must not be confused. But both carry an idea of "approaching/reaching", and they stand five verses apart in the sūra. I record this as an association, not as a claim of derivation.

عَرَاء — root ع-ر-ي. Bareness. ʿArāʾ — ground with nothing on it, treeless, shadeless, empty.

The picture of the word: an open space with nothing to shelter in.

مَذْمُوم — root ذ-م-م. To blame, to censure. Dhamm — blame (the opposite of praise). Dhimma — responsibility, the obligation of protection — and this second sense, though it looks like the opposite of the first, is from the same root: the holder of a dhimma is one who will be blamed if he does not protect.

Root: ج-ب-ي. To collect, to gather together, to bring in. Jibāya — the collection of taxes; jābī — the collector.

In Form VIII (ijtabā): to gather for oneself, to pick out and set apart.

And the fine point of the word is here, as my own reading: ijtibāʾ is gathering by selection from among what is scattered. In the preceding verse the man "would have been cast onto the bare ground" — that is, scattered. In this verse he is gathered in.

And the sense "to gather in" of the root jabā echoes the verb ṣarama (to harvest) of the narrative. The owners of the garden went to gather and found nothing; Jonah is gathered.

I record this as an observation about the word; the two roots are distinct and I claim no deliberate link.

فَجَعَلَهُۥ مِنَ ٱلصَّٰلِحِينَ — "and made him one of the righteous".

صَلَحَ — root ص-ل-ح. And the sense of the root is a thing's being serviceable, sound, fit for use. Ṣalāḥ — soundness; iṣlāḥ — putting right; ṣulḥ — peace (the mending of a broken relationship). Its opposite is fasād.

And the preposition min is worth noting: mina'l-ṣāliḥīn — "one of the righteous". He is being included in a group.

The structure of the verse announces an outcome: the episode is closed, the man has returned to his place. And this completes the example the sūra gives the Prophet: Jonah was named as a negative example, but he was not named with a bad end.

This fine point matters, as my own reading: the verse criticises a prophet and in the same breath exalts him. The criticism is made not to bring the man down but to separate out the behaviour.

And this is consistent with the sūra as a whole: from the beginning the sūra counsels looking at the act, not at the person. Even the portrait of the other side is drawn without naming anyone.

These three verses are the most personal place in the sūra and they contain a description of burnout.

Makẓūm — full, and stopped up. This is the state of a person who has worked a long time without response: it has built up inside him, and he cannot pour it out.

And what the verse does is not to condemn this state. Jonah's anger is not censured; what is censured is the departure the anger produced.

The difference matters and it works directly in daily life:

At work. Labour that goes long without response produces exhaustion. Exhaustion is not a fault. The fault is the turning of exhaustion into a sudden break.

In relationships. Accumulated hurt produces, at some point, the sentence "enough". The sentence itself may be justified; but the moment it is said is generally the worst moment.

In calling, in teaching. The conviction that the other side will not change is the commonest ground for withdrawing. And the story of Jonah takes aim at exactly this conviction: his people believed.

And the command the sūra gives is a single word: fa'ṣbir — be patient.

And the definition of patience stands in the root of the word: to hold oneself in a place. Not to wait for the feeling to pass, but not to leave one's place while the feeling stays.

One further note: the verse does not say "do not be angry". Anger is found in a prophet in the forty-eighth verse and it is not named as a sin. What is commanded is not the absence of the feeling but the continuation of the act.