يَٰبَنِىٓ ءَادَمَ لَا يَفْتِنَنَّكُمُ ٱلشَّيْطَٰنُ كَمَآ أَخْرَجَ أَبَوَيْكُم مِّنَ ٱلْجَنَّةِ يَنزِعُ عَنْهُمَا لِبَاسَهُمَا لِيُرِيَهُمَا سَوْءَٰتِهِمَآ إِنَّهُۥ يَرَىٰكُمْ هُوَ وَقَبِيلُهُۥ مِنْ حَيْثُ لَا تَرَوْنَهُمْ إِنَّا جَعَلْنَا ٱلشَّيَٰطِينَ أَوْلِيَآءَ لِلَّذِينَ لَا يُؤْمِنُونَ
Yā banī Ādama lā yaftinannakumu'sh-shayṭānu kamā akhraja abawaykum mina'l-jannati yanziʿu ʿanhumā libāsahumā li-yuriyahumā sawʾātihimā, innahū yarākum huwa wa qabīluhū min ḥaythu lā tarawnahum, innā jaʿalna'sh-shayāṭīna awliyāʾa lilladhīna lā yuʾminūn
"O children of Adam! Let not Satan tempt you as he brought your parents out of the Garden, stripping from them their clothing to show them their shameful parts. He and his tribe see you from where you do not see them. We have made the satans the guardians of those who do not believe."
The root ن-ز-ع: to pull a thing out of the place where it stands, to strip it away. The root was treated at 79/1 in al-Nāziʿāt (wa'n-nāziʿāti gharqā) and at 3/26 in Āl ʿImrān (wa tanziʿu'l-mulk). I rely on those treatments.
| Verb | Mood | What it states |
|---|---|---|
| Akhraja | Perfect | He brought out — a finished act |
| Yanziʿu | Imperfect | Stripping — a state (a circumstantial clause) |
The imperfect coming here tells the event as though it were going on before one's eyes. In Arabic this is called ḥikāyat al-ḥāl: a past event is brought to life in the present tense.
I record this as an observation: the verse puts an event that happened in the past inside a warning that looks to the present — and the mood of the verb does the same work.
And the object of the verb must be recorded: libāsahumā. In the twenty-second verse the covering was told as being made afterwards (patching with leaves); here a libās is said to have been stripped away.
| Reading | What libās is |
|---|---|
| 1 | An actual covering — a garment that was upon them and was stripped away |
| 2 | The state of the sawʾāt being unseen — that is, "coveredness" is named as clothing |
The Qurʾān gives no detail on this. Both are transmitted; I do not impose a preference, and I do not add the detail the Qurʾān does not give.
The construction of the sentence must be recorded: the same verb (ر-أ-ي) twice, once affirmative and once negative, with the subjects exchanged.
And there is a disagreement of pronouns: innahū yarākum (singular) → lā tarawnahum (plural). This is explained by the intervening huwa wa qabīluhū: the sentence, beginning in the singular, passes to the plural once the tribe has been added. This is a datum of word order.
قَبِيل — the root ق-ب-ل: to be opposite, to face towards. Qabīl is "those who come together and face the same way" — a tribe, a company.
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the one-sidedness of the verb of seeing: the verse states an asymmetry — one side sees, the other does not. And the thirtieth verse will state the consequence of this asymmetry: wa yaḥsabūna annahum muhtadūn — "and they suppose themselves to be rightly guided." Not seeing joins with not knowing that one does not see.
| Verse | Seeing | Who |
|---|---|---|
| 7/27 | Lā tarawnahum | Man — what he cannot see |
| 7/179 | Lahum aʿyunun lā yubṣirūna bihā | Man — what he does not see |
| 7/198 | Wa tarāhum yanẓurūna ilayka wa hum lā yubṣirūn | The idols — looking and not seeing |
Three verses, three different failures to see. The first an impossibility, the second a non-use, the third an absence. I record this as an observation, and the table can be verified from the text.
The construction of the sentence must be recorded, and it must be compared with the thirtieth verse.
| Verse | Sentence | Agent |
|---|---|---|
| 7/27 | Innā jaʿalna'sh-shayāṭīna awliyāʾa lilladhīna lā yuʾminūn | God |
| 7/30 | Innahumu'ttakhadhu'sh-shayāṭīna awliyāʾa min dūni'llāh | Human beings |
The same relation is tied in two verses to two different agents: in 27 "We made", in 30 "they took".
This is a place that falls within a debate of kalām (the divine decree, the creation of acts), and no polemic of kalām is entered into in this commentary (Method). All I record is this: the text builds both sentences and does not resolve the relation between them. The two verses stand three verses apart and are given to the reader together.
And this datum of word order must be recorded: in the twenty-seventh verse the judgement is qualified as lilladhīna lā yuʾminūn (for those who do not believe) — that is, it is not general, it is tied to an attribute. Per the method (Method) I record that this is an attribute and not an identity (the same note was entered at 47/12 in Muḥammad).