Nūḥ 71:28

Rabbi'ghfir lī wa li-wālidayya wa li-man dakhala baytiya muʾminan wa li'l-muʾminīna wa'l-muʾmināt; wa lā tazidi'l-ẓālimīna illā tabārā

"My Lord! Forgive me, and my parents, and whoever entered my house as a believer, and all believing men and believing women. And do not increase the wrongdoers in anything but ruin."

After the weight of verses 26-27 the sūra closes with a prayer for forgiveness. And the structure of this prayer is carefully built.

The prayer draws four rings widening outward from the centre:

The order itself gives a measure. Noah asks first for himself.

At first sight this may look strange — like selfishness. It is not, and it is an order repeated in the Qurʾān (Abraham's prayer: "Our Lord! Forgive me, and my parents, and the believers, on the day the reckoning is held", Ibrāhīm 14/41). The ground of the order is this: a person who has not settled his own account is in no position to ask for another. To begin with oneself is not a priority but an admission: I am on this list too.

And note: Noah is a prophet who preached for nine hundred and fifty years and whose people were destroyed. In the last verse of the sūra the first thing he asks for is his own forgiveness. The principle treated in Sūrat al-Naṣr (110/3) holds here too: the act performed when the work is finished is asking forgiveness — "giving up the claim that what was done was done without shortfall."

The word is dual: wālidayya — the two parents.

Root و-ل-د: to beget. Wālid (father), wālida (mother), walad (child). The wide analysis of this root was made in Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ (112/3).

Noah's asking forgiveness for his parents has been made the ground of an inference in the classical commentaries: that they were believers. The ground is this: the Qurʾān openly forbids asking forgiveness for those who have died as mushrikūn and treats this by the example of Abraham's father (al-Tawba 9/113-114). Since a prophet cannot be supposed to do what is forbidden, Noah's parents must have been believers.

This is an inference, not an open statement of the Qurʾān. There is no other information whatever about Noah's parents in the Qurʾān.

The third ring, one of the most disputed expressions in the sūra.

بيتي — what does "my house" mean? Three readings are transmitted in the classical commentaries:

The first reading is the most widespread and stands closest to the wording of the word. The second is reasonable too and fits the plot of the story. I make no definite preference.

مُؤْمِنًا — the real point is here.

The word is a circumstantial accusative: "he entered — being a believer". That is, the verse does not set two conditions; it sets a single condition, and that condition is not "to enter" but "to enter as a believer."

This is a fine distinction and consistent with the whole sūra. Not everyone who entered Noah's house is within the scope of the prayer. Physical nearness produces no status.

And this has an extremely sharp counterpart within the Qurʾān: Noah's wife. The Qurʾān mentions the wives of Noah and of Lot together and gives this verdict: "Both were under two righteous servants of Ours; but they betrayed them. Their husbands availed them nothing against God" (al-Taḥrīm 66/10).

That is, "entering the house" — and as the prophet's wife at that — is not enough. The note muʾminan in Noah's prayer preserves exactly this distinction. Even while praying, the sūra does not loosen the measure.

I record that I make this link between the sūra and al-Taḥrīm 66/10 as my own reading.

The fourth and widest ring. And here the prayer goes beyond Noah's people.

In this expression there is no note of time. It does not say "those who believed on that day". Most classical commentaries say that this expression covers all believers until the resurrection.

If this reading is correct, the sūra closes thus: a prophet rejected for centuries prays in his last sentence for everyone who will come after him.

And there is this too: muʾminīn and muʾmināt — men and women are named separately. This is the only place in the sūra where women are mentioned. This paired construction is a method the Qurʾān uses to state openly that a ruling covers both sides (its widest example: al-Aḥzāb 33/35).

The fourth and last "increase" sentence of the sūra. It is the same as the sentence in verse 24, only the last word changed: there ḍalāl (straying), here tabār.

تبار, root ب-و-ر: to lie idle, to become unworkable, to fall to ruin.

The concrete sense of the root comes from agriculture: arḍun bāʾir, land unsown, left empty, giving no yield. From here arises the sense "to become useless, to rot".

Its derivatives:

• bār / būr — coming to nothing, useless. In the Qurʾān: "You are a people gone to ruin" (al-Fatḥ 48/12, qawman būrā).
• yabūr — it comes to nothing. "The snare of those who plot evil comes to nothing" (Fāṭir 35/10).
• tabār — ruin, total destruction.

The choice of the word closes the sūra. These were a people who had been promised gardens and rivers in verse 12 — that is, sown, watered, fertile land. The name of what they receive in return for what they rejected is a word chosen from the same field: land left empty, giving no yield.

I record this as my own reading; the agricultural sense of the root, on the other hand, is information given in the classical lexicons.

The most striking side of verse 28 is that it joins two opposite prayers in a single sentence: the request for forgiveness and the request for ruin. Between them there is only a wāw.

This juxtaposition is uncomfortable and it should be. The sūra does not put mercy and verdict into separate verses and hold them apart; it says them in the same breath.

This is the Qurʾān's general method in any case, and it was recorded in other parts of this text as well: glad tidings and warning stand side by side, neither cancelling the other. Here the same thing appears in a prophet's prayer.