al-Aʿrāf 7:2-3

Kitābun unzila ilayka fa-lā yakun fī ṣadrika ḥarajun minhu li-tundhira bihī wa dhikrā li'l-muʾminīn · Ittabiʿū mā unzila ilaykum min rabbikum wa lā tattabiʿū min dūnihī awliyāʾ, qalīlan mā tadhakkarūn

"It is a Book sent down to you — let there be no constriction in your breast on account of it — that you may warn by it, and as a reminder to the believers. · Follow what has been sent down to you from your Lord; do not follow other guardians beside Him. How little you take to heart!"

The concrete sense of the root: tightness, a narrow place. The lexicographers describe ḥaraj as "a place where the trees are so tangled together that one cannot get in". From this comes the sense of narrowness, distress, the tightening of the breast.

The root occurs in the sūra al-Anʿām and at 22/78 in al-Ḥajj (wa mā jaʿala ʿalaykum fi'd-dīni min ḥaraj); the use in al-Aʿrāf is different, and the difference should be recorded: there ḥaraj is a weight not laid upon the one addressed by the religion, here it is the constriction in the breast of the messenger.

A point of word order should be recorded. The main construction of the verse is this:

Kitābun unzila ilayka — li-tundhira bihī wa dhikrā li'l-muʾminīn

That is, "it is a Book sent down to you, that you may warn by it." But a sentence comes in between the two parts: fa-lā yakun fī ṣadrika ḥarajun minh.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the position of the sentence: before the purpose of the Book's descent is stated, a note is entered about the inner state of the messenger. Before the task of warning is assigned, the distress that task will cause is named.

And this finds its answer at the end of the sūra: khudhi'l-ʿafwa wa'mur bi'l-ʿurfi wa aʿriḍ ʿani'l-jāhilīn (199) — there too the messenger is told what to do in the face of the addressee's response. The sūra opens by telling the messenger "do not be distressed" and closes by telling him "turn away".

A comparison: in al-Shuʿarāʾ at 26/3 the same place was held by laʿallaka bākhiʿun nafsaka allā yakūnū muʾminīn — there the messenger's grief was described with the words destroying himself. The same sentence was also treated in al-Kahf at 18/6. Three sūras look at the same state of the messenger with three different words:

The third verse builds the whole matter of the sūra out of two verbs: ittabiʿū and lā tattabiʿū. The same root (ت-ب-ع), one an imperative and one a prohibition.

And the object of the prohibition should be recorded: awliyāʾ — "guardians", in the plural. The verse does not say "do not follow other gods"; it says "do not follow guardians".

The root و-ل-ي: nearness, adjacency. Walī — the one who is near, who takes charge of another's affair. The root was treated in al-Jāthiya and in al-Baqara at 2/257 (Allāhu waliyyu'lladhīna āmanū); I rely on that treatment.

I record this as an observation: the choice of the word overlaps with two later sentences of the sūra — innā jaʿalna'sh-shayāṭīna awliyāʾa lilladhīna lā yuʾminūn (27) and innahumu'ttakhadhu'sh-shayāṭīna awliyāʾa min dūni'llāh (30). That is, the prohibition of the third verse receives its ground in the twenty-seventh and thirtieth verses. This is a link that can be verified within the sūra.