Nūḥ 71:21

Qāla Nūḥun Rabbi innahum ʿaṣawnī wa'ttabaʿū man lam yazidhu māluhū wa waladuhū illā khasārā

"Noah said: My Lord! They disobeyed me and followed one whose wealth and children increased him in nothing but loss."

Something happens here: Noah's name is mentioned again.

Throughout the sūra Noah was speaking, and his speech was always given with qāla (he said) or directly in the first person singular. At verse 21 the narrator steps in and says "Noah said". The same thing will happen once more at verse 26.

The three places where the name occurs are the three joints of the sūra:

That is, the name marks the section headings of the sūra. With verse 21 Noah stops describing method and begins to make a diagnosis.

Root ع-ص-ي. According to what the lexicographers transmit, this root is related to the word ʿaṣā (staff, rod). The place where the relation is made is this expression: shaqqa'l-ʿaṣā — "he split the staff", that is, he separated from the community, he broke its unity. From here maʿṣiya is tied to the sense of separating from the whole, going outside the direction given. I give this explanation as a report from the classical lexicons; I make no claim of certainty.

The verb comes strikingly with "me": ʿaṣawnī — they disobeyed me. Not God, but Noah. This is the counterpart of the third command in verse 3 (aṭīʿūn — obey me). Noah is reporting the outcome of the command given to him: the demand for obedience was refused.

But the Qurʾān says openly elsewhere what this means: obedience to the messenger is not directed to the messenger's person ("Whoever obeys the Messenger has obeyed God", al-Nisāʾ 4/80). Noah is not stating a personal grievance here; he is stating the outcome of the task.

Root ت-ب-ع: to go after, to follow, to fall in behind. Ittibāʿ (Form VIII), to fall in behind something.

A contrast is set up in the sentence, and this is the verse's main diagnosis:

They disobeyed me — they followed another.

That is, the matter is not disobedience; it is the change of direction of obedience. A human being cannot go without following something. Noah's observation is that his people did not become "independent people who follow no one"; they only changed the address they followed.

"Man" is singular and indefinite. No name is given. The leaders of the people could have been named; they are not. Instead a type is described: one who has wealth and children, but for whom these bring nothing but loss.

This is the Qurʾān's method of naming, and it is recorded in the method of this text too: what the verse describes are attributes; whoever carries that attribute is included in it. To describe a position instead of targeting a person saves the ruling from being imprisoned in history.

Now we come to the most important internal link in the sūra.

In verse 12 Noah had promised his people this: "He will reinforce you with wealth and sons" (bi-amwālin wa banīn). In verse 21 he says this: the wealth and children (māluhū wa waladuhū) of the man they followed increased him in nothing but loss.

The same two things — wealth and offspring — occur nine verses apart as a promise and as a cause of loss.

A detail: in verse 12 both are plural (amwāl, banīn), in verse 21 both are singular (māl, walad). Plurality suggests an abundance shared and distributed, singularity an accumulation gathered into one hand. I record this as an observation; I do not know of this distinction being treated in the classical commentaries.

The real matter is this: the same object gives two different results within two different relations.

The Qurʾān's stance on this is consistent and has been taken up in other parts of this text:

• al-Humaza 104/2-3 — the man who gathers wealth and counts it and supposes his wealth will make him immortal. The observation in the discussion of al-Humaza: the criticism is directed not at the source of the wealth but at the relation formed with it.
• al-Fajr 89/15-16 — the man who reads abundance as "my Lord has honoured me". The observation in the discussion of al-Fajr: abundance and straitness are two faces of the same act; both inferences are rejected.
• al-Anfāl 8/28 — "Your wealth and your children are only a trial."

What this sūra adds is a third face: the case where wealth makes its owner a model for others. In al-Humaza the owner of wealth was deceiving himself; in al-Fajr he was measuring himself wrongly; here he deceives others.

Root خ-س-ر: to diminish, to lose, to suffer loss. It is a word of the language of commerce — the shrinking of capital.

The same root occurred in Sūrat al-Muṭaffifīn as the verb of giving short measure (yukhsirūn — they give less, 83/3) and in Sūrat al-ʿAṣr as the human being's general condition (la-fī khusr — surely in loss, 103/2).

The fine side of the use here is this: something that increases produces a diminishing. Lam yazidhu … illā khasārā — the sentence is built on an increase and ends on a diminishing. As the wealth increases, the capital shrinks. The language of commerce has been turned inside out.

This verse is the sūra's only social analysis, and combined with the Qurʾān's records about the story of Noah elsewhere it gives a clear picture.

The Qurʾān records separately that those who opposed Noah were the notables of the people: "The chiefs of those who disbelieved among his people said…" (Hūd 11/27). And the objection they put to Noah is this: "We see that only the rabble follow you" (Hūd 11/27); the same objection at al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/111: "Shall we believe you when it is the lowest who follow you?"

So the picture the Qurʾān records is two-sided:

• The rich look down on those who follow Noah ("the rabble").
• The people follow the rich (this verse).

The sūra marks the second side. And note: Noah does not accuse his people here of "following the rabble"; he says "they followed the winners". That is, what is followed is not rightness but visible success.

This is a structure that recurs in the Qurʾān's stories of the prophets. The same logic is formulated openly elsewhere: "When We wish to destroy a town, We command those of its people who live in ease; and they commit corruption in it…" (al-Isrāʾ 17/16).

The mechanism this verse describes — material success producing authority on the question of truth — is observable and still works.

There is no logical link between the truth of a view and the position of the one who defends it; but in practice people make this link constantly. The winner is listened to outside the field in which he won as well. Wealth is read as a kind of general certificate of competence.

The question the verse asks is plain: how does that person's own account stand? Noah's answer is that the man his people followed is himself at a loss. That is, the model being followed stands on the minus side of his own scales — but because his scales are not visible he goes on being a model.