al-Aʿrāf 7:24-25

Qāla'hbiṭū baʿḍukum li-baʿḍin ʿaduww, wa lakum fi'l-arḍi mustaqarrun wa matāʿun ilā ḥīn · Qāla fīhā taḥyawna wa fīhā tamūtūna wa minhā tukhrajūn

"He said: 'Go down, some of you an enemy to others. On the earth there is for you a place of settlement and provision for a time.' · He said: 'There you will live, there you will die, and from it you will be brought forth.'"

Both the twenty-fourth and the twenty-fifth verses begin with qāla, and there is no conjunction between them.

In Arabic, two qālas belonging to the same subject coming one after another without a conjunction is a construction worth recording. The lexicographers generally explain it as showing that the second speech is a separate, self-standing announcement, distinct from the first.

I record this as an observation: the first speech states the going down and the conditions of the going down; the second states the frame of life on the earth. The two are separate subjects, and the text too puts them into separate sentences.

The twenty-fifth verse is built on three imperfect verbs:

A point of word order must be recorded: the first two verbs are active, the third passive.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the voice of the verbs: living and dying are built as man's own act; being brought forth as the act of another. That is, at the third step the subject changes.

And the same structure was built with three verbs at 20/55 in Ṭāhā: minhā khalaqnākum wa fīhā nuʿīdukum wa minhā nukhrijukum tāratan ukhrā. The two verses can be compared:

I record this as an observation, and the table can be verified from the two texts: Ṭāhā tells the event from the side of the one who does it, al-Aʿrāf from the side of the one who lives it. And al-Aʿrāf, by making its third verb passive, joins the two tellings.

The root م-ت-ع was undone at 47/12 in Muḥammad: enjoyment + "stretching on, continuing" (mataʿa'n-nahāru). I rely on that treatment.

Ilā ḥīn — "until a time". The root ح-ي-ن states an indefinite span. The same phrase occurs at 2/36 in al-Baqara as well (wa lakum fi'l-arḍi mustaqarrun wa matāʿun ilā ḥīn) — word for word the same sentence in the two sūras.

I record this as an observation: the verse gives two things — a place and a span. The limit of the place is not stated; the limit of the span is stated but its measure is not given. And the thirty-fourth verse will repeat the same matter for communities: wa li-kulli ummatin ajal.

When the story ends the sūra turns directly to the reader and calls out four times, yā banī Ādam. This address occurs five times in the Qurʾān; four of them are in al-Aʿrāf (26, 27, 31, 35), the fifth is at Yā Sīn 36/60.

Four of them in four different moods: statement, prohibition, command, condition. This is a countable order.

And all four have a link with the story — I record this as an observation: