وَأَنَّهُمْ ظَنُّوا كَمَا ظَنَنتُمْ أَن لَّن يَبْعَثَ اللَّهُ أَحَدًا
In this verse an addressee suddenly appears: kamā ẓanantum — "just as you supposed". The second person plural.
In the flow of the sūra this is a break. Until that moment the jinn were speaking either of themselves ("we") or of third persons ("our fool", "some men among human beings"). Now they address someone directly.
| View | Who speaks, who is addressed |
|---|---|
| 1 | The jinn are relating this to their own people; "you" = the people of the jinn. That is: "they (human beings) too supposed as you supposed." |
| 2 | The jinn are speaking of human beings and the addressees are human beings; "they" = a party among the jinn, "you" = human beings. |
| 3 | The sentence has passed out of the jinn's speech into the address of the revelation; "you" = the addressees of the Qurʾān. |
The first view accords with the note in al-Aḥqāf 46/29 that "they went back to their people", and is the reading that interferes least with the flow of the sentence. I find it reasonable but do not offer it as a preference; the pronouns of the verse do not permit a definite assignment.
The indeterminacy may itself be serving a function. Note what exactly the sentence says: they too supposed as you did. That is, what the verse does is to show the meeting of two parties in the same error. Once who is addressed is settled, this commonality narrows; while it remains indeterminate, it widens.
This is an instance of the technique known in Arabic rhetoric as iltifāt (a shift in the direction of address): the person changes in the middle of the sentence and the reader is suddenly drawn into the position of addressee. The Qurʾān uses this technique a great deal.
Root ب-ع-ث: to lift a thing from its place and set it in motion, to send. The Qurʾān uses this root for two separate works, and both are readable here:
- To raise the dead — to lift the dead from the grave. Baʿth is the name of the hereafter.
- To send — to dispatch a messenger. The pattern "He sent among them a messenger" (baʿatha fīhim rasūlan) is widespread in the Qurʾān.
| Reading | Sense of the sentence |
|---|---|
| Raising | "God will not raise anyone after death" — a denial of the hereafter. |
| Sending a messenger | "God will not send anyone as a messenger" — a denial of prophethood. |
The context supports both. On the one hand the sūra is concerned with revelation (with messengership) — what the jinn heard is a revelation. On the other, verses 24-25 speak plainly of a promised day.
The word's densest use in the Qurʾān is in the direction of raising, and so are the like sentences transmitted from the mouths of deniers: "Shall we be raised after death?" I find this reading somewhat the stronger, but I make no definite preference between the two — and this must be added: the two denials hang together. If there is no day of reckoning there is no need of a messenger; if there is no messenger the report of the reckoning does not come.
- Verse 5: "We supposed nobody lies about God." — Excessive trust in a source of knowledge.
- Verse 7: "They had supposed God would raise / send no one." — A deficient conception of God's act.
Both are framed with the verb ẓann. And what the two have in common is this: assuming that something will not happen. The jinn describe their errors not as "we believed a wrong thing" but as "we did not reckon with a possibility".
This is consistent with the sūra's understanding of knowledge. In verse 10 they will say "we do not know"; in verse 12 they will say "we understood that we cannot escape." The three together set up an attitude: to accept the limit of one's own knowledge.