Nūḥ 71:13-14

Mā lakum lā tarjūna lillāhi waqārā · Wa qad khalaqakum aṭwārā

"What is the matter with you, that you do not credit God with any weight? It is He who created you stage by stage."

The tone changes in Noah's speech. Until now there was an offer; here a question comes, and it is not a question whose answer is expected.

In Arabic the construction mā lakum marks an oddity in the addressee's behaviour. Its English equivalent is exactly "what is the matter with you", "what has come over you". It conveys astonishment and reproach. The Qurʾān uses this construction in several places: "What is the matter with you, that you do not spend in the way of God?" (al-Ḥadīd 57/10); "What is the matter with you? How do you judge?" (al-Qalam 68/36).

Its name in rhetoric is istifhām inkārī — a question that seeks no answer but conveys objection. What is asked for is not information; what is asked of the addressee is that he look at his own behaviour from the outside.

There is a genuine dispute about the sense here and it must not be hidden.

Root ر-ج-و: to hope, to expect. From the same root comes rajāʾ (hope). This is the standard sense of the word and it occurs often in the Qurʾān in this sense: "whoever hopes for the meeting with God" (al-ʿAnkabūt 29/5; al-Kahf 18/110).

But in this verse the sense "to hope" is strained: the sentence "you do not hope for a weight for God" stands oddly in English as it does in Arabic. For this reason three readings are transmitted in the classical sources:

The first reading is the one most widely transmitted in the classical commentaries. The second interferes least with the language and in my judgement sits better with the context of the verse: the sūra's complaint is not fearlessness but not taking seriously. But this preference is not binding; none of the three readings runs against the text.

This is why I render it "do not credit Him with": the work of the word here is to convey the failure to ascribe an attribute to God.

The densest word in the sūra and — thanks to a link in the language — the word that does the most work within it.

Root و-ق-ر. Its concrete sense: weight. A thing's being heavy, not easily moved from its place.

The root's derivatives give different faces of this weight:

• waqār — gravity, seriousness, standing. What is heavy is not blown about; this is why the word "heavy" conveys standing in Arabic as it does in English ("weighty", "a person of gravity").
• wiqr — a load, a weight carried.
• waqr — a heaviness in the ear, deafness. In the Qurʾān: "in their ears there is a heaviness" (Fuṣṣilat 41/44; also al-Anʿām 6/25, Luqmān 31/7, al-Isrāʾ 17/46).
• tawqīr — to give someone weight, to show respect. In the Qurʾān: "…that you may support him and honour him" (al-Fatḥ 48/9).

Now look inside the sūra. Six verses earlier, in verse 7, this people's first defence was this: "they put their fingers in their ears" — that is, they put a waqr (heaviness) into their own ears.

And in verse 13 this is said: you do not credit God with any waqār (weight).

The same root, in two places, in two opposite works: those who did not give the weight to God put it into their own ears. I record this link as a reading I draw from the text of the sūra; I do not know of such a link being made between these two verses in the classical commentaries. The unity of the root, on the other hand, is a datum of the language and is not disputed.

That the word comes indefinite is worth recording too: waqāran — "a weight". That is, not "God's weight" but "any weight at all for God". The sentence thus voices the most minimal demand: at least some measure of taking seriously.

The wāw at the head of the sentence is the wāw of circumstance: "…whereas, and yet". That is, verse 14 gives the ground of the question in verse 13: your not taking it seriously is strange, because your very existence is His work.

أطوار is the plural of ṭawr. Root ط-و-ر.

Ṭawr means the state, condition, stage a thing is in. Further, according to what the lexicographers transmit, the root carries the sense of limit, boundary: usages such as mā ṭāra bi-hādhā'l-makān — "he did not come near the bounds of this place" — are related. The two senses join: every stage has a limit, every limit a stage.

The word occurs in the Qurʾān only here. This solitariness gives it a weight of its own.

What does it point to? Three main explanations are transmitted in the classical commentaries, and the three do not exclude one another:

1. The stages in the womb. The Qurʾān enumerates this openly elsewhere: "We created the human being from an extract of clay. Then We made him a drop of fluid in a secure place. Then We turned the drop into a clinging thing; and the clinging thing into a lump of flesh, and the lump of flesh into bones; and We clothed the bones with flesh; then We brought him into being as another creation" (al-Muʾminūn 23/12-14). Similarly: al-Ḥajj 22/5.

2. The phases of life. Infancy, childhood, youth, maturity, old age. The Qurʾān enumerates this separately too: "It is He who created you from dust, then from a drop of fluid, then from a clinging thing. Then He brings you forth as an infant, then that you may reach your full strength, then that you may grow old…" (al-Ghāfir 40/67; also al-Rūm 30/54).

3. Difference among human beings. Being created differing in colour, language, temperament, capacity. This reading rests on the word's sense of "state, condition".

The verse chooses none of the three, and that it does not is meaningful: the word has been left too wide to be tied to a single process.

A limit has to be drawn here. I do not draw from this verse the conclusion that modern embryological knowledge is being announced. The verse says that a human being is not always in the same state, that he passes through stages — and this was something known by observation. Birth, growth and ageing are facts every society sees. The verse's argument is not the disclosure of a hidden piece of knowledge; it is a demand for the correct reading of something everyone sees.

Verses 13-14 build an inference, and the force of the inference lies in its simplicity:

You did not make yourselves. You were not always in the state you are in now; you were passed through a series of stages and had no say in any of them. That being so, what is the explanation of your giving no weight at all to the party that passed you through them?

The verse's reproach is, before a demand for belief, a demand for consistency. Someone who makes light of what he owes his own existence to is inconsistent.

The sense of waqār as "giving weight" describes a present-day behaviour well. People most often do not reject the idea of God; they lighten it. It is an acceptance that is accepted but has no consequence: it touches no decision of life, changes no choice, weighs nowhere.

This is exactly the sūra's complaint. Noah's people too were not denying God altogether — as will be seen in verse 23, their problem was not God's existence but the things they set beside Him. The sūra says that in practice the difference between denial and indifference is small: an acceptance with no weight is not counted an acceptance.