al-Aʿrāf 7:31

Yā banī Ādama khudhū zīnatakum ʿinda kulli masjidin wa kulū wa'shrabū wa lā tusrifū, innahū lā yuḥibbu'l-musrifīn

"O children of Adam! Take your adornment at every place of prayer; eat and drink, but do not go to excess. He does not love those who go to excess."

The sense of the root: to adorn, to make beautiful. Zīna is what makes a thing look fair. The root was treated at 18/7 in al-Kahf (innā jaʿalnā mā ʿala'l-arḍi zīnatan lahā) and at 20/59 in Ṭāhā (yawmu'z-zīna). I rely on those treatments.

And in this sūra the root occurs three times:

This sentence is a new link in a line of measure built up in the index.

A summary of what was treated at 25/67 in al-Furqān (I rely on it and do not repeat it):

• Isrāf and iqtār (stinting) are both rejected as two extremes.
• The root ق-ت-ر: to narrow, to stint.
• Qawām — the root ق-و-م: "the point between two extremes".
• The line had been tied to these verses: Fāṭir 35/32, Luqmān 31/19 and 31/32 (qaṣd), al-Baqara 2/219 (quli'l-ʿafw).

Al-Aʿrāf 7/31 is added to this line as a new link, and its difference must be recorded:

In al-Aʿrāf only one extreme is forbidden. And the reason for this becomes visible in the next verse: verse 32 will deal separately with the other extreme (setting out to forbid). That is, the two extremes have been divided between two verses. I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the arrangement of the two verses.

The root س-ر-ف: to exceed the bound, to lose the measure. The lexicographers record that the word carries not only the sense "to spend much" but also "not to use a thing in its place". The root was treated at 20/127 in Ṭāhā (man asrafa wa lam yuʾmin) and at 40/28 and 40/43 in Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin). I rely on those treatments.

And in this sūra the root occurs twice more, and both are striking:

I record this as an observation: the sūra uses the same word both for the measure of eating and drinking and for the conduct of Lot's people. The shared idea of the word is "exceeding the bound", and that idea is at work in both places. I draw no equivalence between the two behaviours from this; all I record is the shared root and the shared idea of the word.

A point of word order must be recorded: the pronoun innahū refers back to God, whose name is not expressly mentioned in the preceding sentences.

The name "God" does not occur in the verse. It will come in the thirty-second verse: zīnata'llāh. That is, the pronoun rests on the expression amara rabbī several verses earlier (29).

And the pattern lā yuḥibbu must be recorded. In the Qurʾān this pattern is a particular way of rejecting a behaviour, and it was treated in the index (al-Baqara 2/190 — inna'llāha lā yuḥibbu'l-muʿtadīn; Luqmān 31/18 — lā yuḥibbu kulla mukhtālin fakhūr). I rely on those treatments.

And in this sūra the same pattern occurs twice:

Both are in the same pattern, and both end with a word that carries the idea of "exceeding the bound" (isrāf and iʿtidāʾ). One concerns eating and drinking, the other supplication. This is an overlap that can be verified from the text.

The verse gives three commands and one prohibition: take, eat, drink — but do not exceed. The commands are three times the number of the prohibition.

What must be recorded is this, and it can be read off the word order: the prohibition comes after the commands and sets a limit within them; it does not cancel them. And the next verse will question the attitude that sets out to turn this limit into a prohibition.