71/10-12 — Asking forgiveness and its return
10. فَقُلْتُ اسْتَغْفِرُوا رَبَّكُمْ إِنَّهُ كَانَ غَفَّارًا Fa-qultu'staghfirū rabbakum innahū kāna ghaffārā "So I said: ask forgiveness of your Lord; He is much-forgiving."
11. يُرْسِلِ السَّمَاءَ عَلَيْكُم مِّدْرَارًا Yursili'l-samāʾa ʿalaykum midrārā "He will send the heaven upon you in abundant rain."
12. وَيُمْدِدْكُم بِأَمْوَالٍ وَبَنِينَ وَيَجْعَل لَّكُمْ جَنَّاتٍ وَيَجْعَل لَّكُمْ أَنْهَارًا Wa yumdidkum bi-amwālin wa banīna wa yajʿal lakum jannātin wa yajʿal lakum anhārā "And He will reinforce you with wealth and sons, and make gardens for you, and make rivers for you."
With verse 10 the sūra enters a new layer. Until now Noah was relating what he did; from here on he relates what he said. That is, the report turns into direct quotation.
This is the most technical side of the sūra and it must not be missed: verses 10-20 are speech within a report. Noah repeats to his Lord what he said to his people. There are three layers: the Qurʾān narrates → Noah gives his report → what Noah said to his people.
The analysis of istighfār was made in Sūrat al-Naṣr (110/3); I rely on the observations made there. Briefly: the root gh-f-r is to cover; Form X conveys seeking; therefore istighfār is to request being covered — the servant does not do something here, he asks that something be done.
In Sūrat al-Naṣr istighfār was an act of ending: after the work was completed, the covering of the shortfalls during that work was asked for. Here, by contrast, istighfār is an act of beginning: it is proposed to a community that has not yet believed, as the first thing to be done.
This difference is important. Istighfār here is not an act of worship for the devout but the way of coming in at the door. Noah does not first give his people a list of articles of belief; he says "ask that your past be covered". That is, the offer begins with the lifting of the burden of the past.
غفار is on the faʿʿāl pattern. In Arabic this pattern conveys intensification and continuity: one who does a thing much, who is a master of it. On the same pattern: razzāq (giver of much provision), tawwāb (much accepting of repentance), qahhār.
The classical sources distinguish Ghafūr from Ghaffār thus: ghafūr (faʿūl) conveys depth — it covers even a very great sin; ghaffār (faʿʿāl) conveys repetition — it covers the same sin of the same person again and again. This distinction is widely made in the traditional books on language; there are also views that count both patterns as absolute.
The choice of ghaffār in this context is meaningful: those addressed are a community that has been repeating the same refusal for centuries. They are told not "He forgives once" but "He forgives again and again".
The function of the verb كان here must be recorded separately. It could have said innahū ghafūrun; it says innahū kāna ghaffārā. In Arabic kāna used of God does not convey past time; it conveys a continuing, unchanging attribute. To render it with "was" in English is misleading. Its meaning is this: this is not a stance He took up later; it has been so from the beginning.
Verse 11 is in the jussive (with a silent ending): yursil, yumdid, yajʿal. This is the state taken in Arabic by verbs that are the answer to a command.
So the grammar sets it up thus: "Ask forgiveness — and if you do, these things follow." No conditional particle is written, but the jussive following the command has already set up the condition. It is the same thing English does in "come, let us talk": the second verb is the result of the first.
This grammatical detail determines how the verses are to be read. The abundance enumerated is the return for asking forgiveness — not an independent promise added alongside it.
The verse does not say "may He send rain"; it says "may He send the heaven". This is a widespread figure in Arabic: the name of the vessel is given to what is in it (in the language of rhetoric, majāz mursal, by the relation of place).
But the choice is not idle. Had it said "rain", a single event would have been spoken of; when it says "heaven", the whole of the source is named. Abundance comes not from one fall of rain but from the continuous working of the heaven.
Root س-م-و: to rise. Samāʾ means "that which is above"; in Arabic anything above a thing can be called its samāʾ — the ceiling of a house too. From the same root come ism (a name: that which raises a thing and makes it distinct), sumuww (loftiness).
Root د-ر-ر. The concrete and primary sense of the root is the flowing of milk abundantly and without interruption. Darrat-i nāqa — the camel's milk flowed abundantly. Dirra is the flow of milk; dārr is an animal rich in milk. The Arabs spoke of a fruitful camel with this word: one that gives the more it is milked, that does not run dry.
مدرار is on the mifʿāl pattern. In Arabic this pattern does two things: it forms the noun of instrument (miftāḥ — key, mīzān — scales) and it conveys intensification (one who does a thing continuously and intensely). Here it is in the second sense: "pouring without cease".
So the picture the verse sets up is this: the heaven, like an animal being milked. Rain is named not as water poured from the sky but as milk flowing from the sky.
One must see how concrete this comparison was for the one addressed. For a community living in a desert and semi-arid region there are two things that keep life standing: rain and the milk-giving animal. The verse joins the two in a single word.
The word occurs in three places in the Qurʾān and in all three in the same context — abundance promised in return for asking forgiveness or for faith: here, at al-Anʿām 6/6 (of the peoples destroyed: "We sent down upon them abundant rain from the sky") and at Hūd 11/52.
The most striking side of these three verses is that they are repeated in almost the same sentences in another place in the Qurʾān. In Sūrat Hūd, the prophet Hūd says to his own people:
"O my people! Ask forgiveness of your Lord, then turn to Him in repentance; He will send the heaven upon you in abundant rain and will add strength to your strength." (Hūd 11/52)
The words are shared: istaghfirū rabbakum, yursili'l-samāʾa ʿalaykum midrārā, and a verb of "increase". Two different prophets, to two different peoples, speaking with the same formula.
"Ask forgiveness of your Lord, then turn to Him in repentance; He will let you enjoy a good provision for an appointed term." (Hūd 11/3)
"Had the people of those towns believed and guarded themselves, We would have opened upon them blessings from the heaven and the earth." (al-Aʿrāf 7/96)
This repetition says something: the link between asking forgiveness and worldly abundance is not a motif peculiar to this sūra; it is a principle the Qurʾān repeats.
Root م-د-د: to extend, to draw out, to sustain, to reinforce. From the same root come madad (aid), imdād (sending reinforcement), mudda (a span of time).
The picture of the word is extending — drawing a thing out and continuing it. That is, wealth and children are mentioned not as something "given" but as something "extended": like the continuation of a line.
This is a fine choice in the context of the sūra. The verb of "increase" (zāda) that occurs in four places in the sūra always conveyed a negative outcome. Here, in God's promise, a different root is used. I record this as an observation.
أموال — the plural of māl. Root م-و-ل. بنين — the plural of ibn; root ب-ن-ي (to build, to construct). That a word meaning "what is built/constructed" is used in Arabic for a child is striking; a generation is the continuation of the structure built.
"Wealth and sons" is a standard pair in the Qurʾān and almost everywhere it comes together with a warning:
And this sūra itself will come back to the same pair nine verses later: "and they followed one whose wealth and children increased him in nothing but loss" (71/21).
Within the same sūra, the same two things occur nine verses apart in two different statuses: in verse 12 a promise, in verse 21 a cause of loss. This is not a contradiction; it is the most important distinction in the sūra and I shall take it up below.
جنة, root ج-ن-ن (to cover, to conceal). The full analysis of this root was made at al-Baqara 2/25 (janīn, jinn, majnūn, mijann, janna); I rely on that. Janna is the garden that covers the ground with its trees.
نهر, root ن-ه-ر: to cleave something open widely and make a way. Nahr is, before the running water itself, its bed; the water flows through the channel it has cut for itself. From the same root comes nahār (day — light's cleaving of the darkness).
The best-known use of the pair in the Qurʾān is in the descriptions of the hereafter: jannātun tajrī min taḥtihā'l-anhār. Here, though, it is promised in this world, in this life. That is, the sūra uses the words of the description of the hereafter for a worldly promise.
An observation: both words have to do with cleaving/covering. The garden covers, the river cleaves. The two together are the exact description of a worked and watered land — that is, agriculture.
This order is like a chain of production: the water comes, wealth and population increase, the land turns into a garden, a system of irrigation is set up. That is, what is promised is not a random abundance but a working economy.
And note: none of it is a miracle. No gold rains from the sky. Everything promised is something that could come about within the ordinary working of nature. The sūra promises not the extraordinary but the turning of the order in one's favour.
What the verse says for certain: the Qurʾān makes a link between a society's putting right its relation with God and that society's material condition. This link is repeated in more than one place (al-Aʿrāf 7/96; Hūd 11/3, 52; al-Ṭalāq 65/2-3) and cannot be denied.
First: the one addressed is a community, not an individual. In all these verses the address is plural: istaghfirū, ʿalaykum, yumdidkum. Noah does not say to one person "ask forgiveness and you will become rich"; he says to a society "set your direction right and your order will be set right". This is not a formula at the level of the individual but a principle at the level of society.
Second: this is not a payment but a consequence. What the verse sets up is not a mechanical exchange. The Qurʾān itself says openly that abundance does not always come from goodness and that good people are not always in abundance. This is treated exactly in Sūrat al-Fajr (89/15-16): abundance and straitness are two faces of the same act — testing — and the Qurʾān rejects the inference "abundance is honouring" with kallā. That observation from the discussion of al-Fajr holds here too.
Third: the sūra itself draws the limit of this promise. In verse 21 Noah will say that his people followed those whose wealth and children were many, and that such a person's wealth increased him in nothing but loss. That is, the sūra records that what it promised in verse 12 is found in verse 21 already obtained and with exactly the opposite outcome.
Where is the difference? In the source and in the direction. In verse 12 wealth is something that comes as the result of turning to God and that is shared with the community. In verse 21 wealth is the support of a person's own position and an instrument for making others subject to him. The object is the same, the relation different.
I draw this distinction from the sūra's own internal structure; I do not present it as a transmitted report. But that the sūra uses the same two words (amwāl, banīn / māl, walad) in two opposite contexts nine verses apart supports this reading.
Fourth: the Qurʾān records the reverse openly as well — abundance can also be given before a society's destruction. "When they forgot what they had been reminded of, We opened upon them the doors of all things; until, just as they were exulting in what they had been given, We seized them suddenly" (al-Anʿām 6/44). That is, abundance has no single meaning.
Fifth — and this the next sūra says. Sūrat al-Jinn sets up the same equation in almost the same words: "Had they gone straight upon that path, We would have given them abundant water to drink" (al-Jinn 72/16). But immediately afterwards, in a single sentence, it names what that water is: "that We might test them by it" (al-Jinn 72/17). The word is fitna — as was treated in the discussion of al-Burūj, the concrete sense of the root is the melting of gold in fire to bring out its purity.
When the two sūras are set side by side the picture is complete: Nūḥ gives the promise, al-Jinn names it. The abundance is genuinely given; but at the moment it is given it turns into an instrument of testing. This also explains how the person Noah will describe in verse 21 — the man whose wealth increases him in nothing but loss — comes about: the one who fails the test loses by what he has been given.
In conclusion: to draw from these verses a rule like "whoever asks forgiveness becomes rich" would be to disregard the verse's plural address and the Qurʾān's other statements. The link the verse makes is real, but it is social, conditional and not guaranteed.
The striking side of these verses is that a religious call opens with a worldly offer. Noah does not first speak to those he addresses of the hereafter; he speaks of water, crops, offspring, land.
The first — pedagogical. One speaks in the language the addressee understands. An argument from the hereafter cannot be built with a person who does not believe in the hereafter; the common ground is this world.
The second — a matter of principle. The Qurʾān does not set up an enmity between this world and the hereafter. To say that turning rightly has a return in this world too is part of an understanding of religion that does not belittle the world. The rest of the sūra (verses 15-20) strengthens this: all the proofs are brought from this world — the heaven, the moon, the sun, the plant, the earth, the roads.