إِنَّا أَرْسَلْنَا نُوحًا إِلَىٰ قَوْمِهِ أَنْ أَنذِرْ قَوْمَكَ مِن قَبْلِ أَن يَأْتِيَهُمْ عَذَابٌ أَلِيمٌ
The sūra opens with a particle of emphasis (inna). In Arabic inna reinforces the sentence: "truly, indeed". The placing of inna at the head of a statement shows that the statement is disputed, or that there is a possibility of the addressee taking it lightly.
What is disputed here? Most probably the institution of messengership itself. At the centre of the objections raised against the Prophet in Mecca stood the question "does God send a human being as a messenger?" The sūra opens by stating in a sentence of emphasis that a human being was sent.
That the verb is plural (arsalnā — we sent) is the Qurʾān's plural of majesty; it conveys no partner. This is a usage settled in the Qurʾān's narrative language.
The root r-s-l: to let loose, to send, to make flow. The analysis of this root was made in Sūrat al-Fīl (105/3); I do not repeat the observation made there. What is to be recorded here is this: the same root will be used again in verse 11 for the sending of rain (yursili'l-samāʾa). So there are two sendings within the sūra: the sending of the messenger and the sending of water. The second is a promise; when it is rejected, it gives way to another water.
The an here is counted in grammar as the explicative an: it opens up the content of the verb before it. "We sent" — to say what? — "that he warn". That is, the content of the task is placed inside the sentence of commissioning.
Root ن-ذ-ر. This root was taken up in the discussion of al-Baqara 2/6 and summarised in Sūrat al-Layl (in connection with 92/15); I rely on the observations made there. Briefly: indhār is to give notice of a coming danger before that danger arrives. There are two conditions inside the word: the danger will be real, and the notice will be given in time.
The verse writes both these conditions openly within itself: the danger is specified (ʿadhābun alīm), and the timing is specified (min qabli an yaʾtiyahum — before it comes upon them). So the lexical definition of the word indhār is repeated as a sentence in the rest of the verse.
When the same root was treated in Sūrat al-Nabaʾ (78/40) this observation was recorded: a warning does not remove the danger — it makes it visible. This observation summarises the whole of Sūrat Nūḥ in advance. What the sūra describes is a danger made visible and not seen for twenty verses. There is also a difference of word order between the two sūras, and it is meaningful: in al-Nabaʾ "We have warned you" (andharnākum) — perfect, the work is done; here "warn" (andhir) — imperative, the work is beginning. One stands at the end of the process, the other at its start.
A note: the verb لا تذر (lā tadhar — do not leave) that occurs in verses 26 and 27 sounds close to andhir but is not from the same root. Andhir is from the root ن-ذ-ر, tadhar from the root و-ذ-ر. I draw no meaning from the resemblance of sound; I record the distinction because it is liable to be confused.
The same word occurs twice with two different pronouns: first in the narrator's words qawmihī (his people), then inside the command qawmaka (your people).
This repetition may look unnecessary; it could have said "to them". That it did not does something: it defines the field of responsibility. The group Noah is to warn is not a crowd he does not know but his own people — his kin, his neighbours, the people among whom he grew up.
The prophets of the Qurʾān are as a rule sent to their own communities; the Qurʾān gives a ground for this separately: the messenger is someone who speaks the language of the one he addresses and is known by him (Ibrāhīm 14/4). There is a burdening side to this — the hardest people to persuade are those who have known a person since childhood.
Root ق-و-م: to stand up, to rise to one's feet, to stand. Qawm means originally "those who stand together behind an undertaking". The wide analysis of this root was made in the discussions of al-Fātiḥa (1/6, mustaqīm) and al-Bayyina (98/5, qayyima).
عذاب, root ع-ذ-ب. The word has an interesting side: from the same root comes ʿadhb, which means sweet water (in the Qurʾān: al-Furqān 25/53, Fāṭir 35/12 — ʿadhbun furāt). The lexicographers explain this relation in different ways; the most widespread explanation is that the root's primary sense is to cut something off and hold it back, punishment being "what cuts a person off from life or from ease", and sweet water "the water that cuts off thirst". I give this explanation as a transmitted report, not with a claim of certainty.
أليم, root أ-ل-م: to feel pain. Alīm is on the faʿīl pattern. In Arabic this pattern can carry both the active sense (causing pain) and the passive (suffering pain); here it is the active: a punishment that hurts.
And the word comes indefinite: ʿadhābun alīm — "a painful punishment". The indefiniteness here conveys magnification (taʿẓīm): a punishment whose description is not given, whose limit is not drawn. Part of the effect of the warning comes from this indefiniteness; a threat whose nature is not stated stands heavier than one described.
The last part of the verse — min qabli an yaʾtiyahum — frames the whole sūra. Everything that will be narrated through the sūra takes place inside this "before".
And in verse 25 the sūra will state the moment that "before" ended, in one word: ughriqū. That is, the ʿadhābun alīm of the first verse and the drowning of verse 25 are the same thing standing at the two ends of the sūra. The twenty-three verses in between are the content of the term granted.