al-Ḥāqqa 69:38-39

Fa-lā uqsimu bimā tubṣirūn · Wa mā lā tubṣirūn "No! I swear by what you see, and by what you do not see."

The thirty-eighth verse is the sharpest turn in the sūra. For thirty-seven verses there was something being recounted: history, the resurrection, the reckoning. Now the telling turns to the teller.

From here on the sūra will not speak of the resurrection. Its subject will be: what is this speech that tells you all this?

This transition explains the whole structure of the sūra. For the sūra recounted a claim — that which will come true. And the last question about a claim is always the same: who is saying it?

This pattern was tabulated in four views in the section on al-Balad 90/1 and was mentioned in the sections on al-Inshiqāq 84/16 and al-Takwīr 81/15 as well. I do not repeat it. In summary, the main views on the function of lā are these: that it is redundant (for emphasis), that it rejects something the addressee has said and then passes to the oath, or that the pattern as a whole means "I swear".

What is to be added here is the pattern's place in this sūra.

The pattern occurs in several places in the Qurʾān and has a striking distribution: it occurs at al-Maʿārij 70/40 as well. Two sūras standing one after the other in the arrangement of the codex, that is, use the same pattern:

I shall return to this link in the section on al-Maʿārij.

Root: ب-ص-ر. To see. Baṣar — the eye, the sense of sight; baṣīra — the eye of the heart, discernment; al-Baṣīr — a name of God.

And this oath is unique in the Qurʾān for its scope.

The Qurʾān's oaths are generally sworn by particular things: by the dawn, by the star, by the fig, by the olive, by time, by the pen, by the city, by the horses. Most of the sūras treated in this commentary open with an oath of that kind.

Here, however, what is sworn by is everything. And it becomes everything by a division being made:

What you see + what you do not see = everything that exists.

This division is of the kind called in logic an exhaustive division: the two categories exclude one another and together cover the whole. There is no third option.

The sūra, that is, leaves nothing outside its oath.

And here is the finest point of the verse.

The Qurʾān has a settled pair for dividing what exists: ٱلْغَيْبِ وَٱلشَّهَٰدَةِ — the unseen and the seen. "Knower of the unseen and the seen" (al-Anʿām 6/73, al-Raʿd 13/9, al-Ḥashr 59/22 and elsewhere).

This verse does not use that pair. It uses a verb instead: "what you see and what you do not see."

The difference is this: the ghayb/shahāda division is made according to the character of the object — a thing either is visible or is not. The tubṣirūn / lā tubṣirūn division is made according to your eye.

The boundary, that is, lies not in being but in the one addressed.

And the consequence of this is that the boundary is mobile. What you do not see today you may see tomorrow; what another sees you may not. The division does not set up an absolute ontology; it describes a position.

I record this as my own reading. Its ground is that the verse does not use the ghayb/shahāda pair but a verb; the difference between the two expressions is plain in the text.

The root غ-ي-ب was treated in detail in the section on al-Baqara 2/3. The findings there:

• "The unseen is not what does not exist but what is not seen. This distinction is critical and is often confused."
• "knowledge resting on the unseen is nothing irrational; most human knowledge is of this kind."
• And four examples were given: the electron, the earth's core, the past, another person's consciousness — none of them directly seen, all known from their effects.
• A note: "I do not write this in the sense that the Qurʾān is doing science; I say only that the principle of 'trusting the unseen' is not out of keeping with the way human knowledge generally works."

I do not repeat it. What is to be added here is this: al-Baqara 2/3 took as its subject faith in the unseen — an attitude asked of the one addressed. Al-Ḥāqqa 69/39, by contrast, makes the unseen the subject of an oath.

The difference is this: for something to be sworn by presupposes that it exists and is of worth. Before asking that the unseen be believed in, that is, the verse has counted the unseen.

And it does this in the addressee's own language: "what you do not see." The one addressed cannot deny that there is something beyond what he sees — because he knows that his own sight is limited.

I record this as my own reading.

In the Qurʾān oaths are generally related to the subject: as when the coming of morning after night is sworn by and then the raising of the dead is spoken of.

What is the relation here?

The answer to the oath is this: "It is surely the speech of a noble messenger." The subject, that is, is the source of a speech.

And the relation is made here: the source of a speech is not seen. You hear the speech; you do not see where it came from. What is heard is in the visible field (tubṣirūn), its source in the invisible one (lā tubṣirūn).

The oath, that is, points to exactly where the dispute lies: on the boundary between the seen and the unseen.

I record this as my own reading. Its ground is that the oath and its answer come one after the other, and that the answer is a matter of transmission.