ٱلسَّمَآءُ مُنفَطِرٌۢ بِهِۦ ۚ كَانَ وَعْدُهُۥ مَفْعُولًا
Al-samāʾu munfaṭirun bih. Kāna waʿduhū mafʿūlā "The heaven is split open by it. His promise has been carried out."
Root: ف-ط-ر. The concrete sense of this root — to split, to crack, to open a thing along its length — and its family of derivatives (fiṭra, fāṭir, ifṭār) were treated in detail in al-Infiṭār. I do not repeat it here.
The core recorded there: the root is used both for the first splitting (creation, fiṭra) and for the last splitting (the cracking of the heaven at the resurrection); and ifṭār (breaking the fast) is the same idea — the opening of what was closed.
ٱلسَّمَآء (samāʾ) is feminine in Arabic. Its adjective would be expected to come feminine as well: munfaṭira.
| Explanation | Ground | Assessment |
|---|---|---|
| Samāʾ is used as masculine too | In Arabic the word samāʾ is counted masculine in some usages; there are examples in poetry | Possible on linguistic grounds; but elsewhere in the Qurʾān samāʾ is treated as feminine (inshaqqati'l-samāʾ, al-Inshiqāq 84/1) |
| An implied word: saqf | What is meant is not "heaven" but "roof"; al-samāʾ here stands for saqfu'l-samāʾ | The Qurʾān qualifies the heaven as saqfan maḥfūẓā (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/32); possible, but it requires an ellipsis |
| The sense of relation | Munfaṭir means "possessor of splitting" (dhātu'nfiṭār); adjectives of relation can come masculine | A usage the lexicographers record; examples such as ḥāʾiḍ, ṭāliq are given |
| Emphasis | The masculine form is a deviation conveying the magnitude of the event | The weakest explanation; loading meaning onto grammatical deviations is risky |
I do not impose a preference. The third explanation is the one most worked on among the lexicographers; but there is no settled conclusion, and I have to state that I find the fourth weak — because to draw meaning from every grammatical deviation is exactly the kind of forcing that Method warns against.
1. To the day (the yawman of the preceding verse): "the heaven is split on that day." 2. To the promise, or to the event in general: "it is split for this reason."
And the particle is striking: بِ. Not fī ("in") but bi ("with, by reason of"). That is, the heaven is split not within that day but by the effect of that day.
This is the day ceasing to be a stretch of time and becoming an agent. It was so in the preceding verse too: the day was a subject that made children old (yajʿalu).
The sentence is in the perfect: kāna… mafʿūlā — "it had been carried out / it has been carried out."
This is a settled technique of the Qurʾān and was treated in the resurrection sūras such as al-Takwīr, al-Infiṭār, al-Inshiqāq: to narrate a future event in the past tense conveys certainty. What is narrated as done and finished is what has no possibility left of not happening.
And in al-Inshirāḥ the same technique was recorded in another direction: rafaʿnā ("We raised"), said in the past tense when no visible result was in evidence; and the innā aʿṭaynāka of Sūrat al-Kawthar was the same move.
What is to be added here is the choice of word: mafʿūl — a passive participle, "that which has been done". That is, the promise is named not as a word not yet fulfilled but as a work already done.
- وَعْد (waʿd) — a word given, a promise (generally positive).
- وَعِيد (waʿīd) — a threat, a warning (negative).
The two are from the same root and the difference lies in the content of the word given, not in the word itself. In this verse waʿd is used, but the content is a warning.
This breadth of the word makes it possible for the verse to carry a meaning that changes with its addressee: the same promise is glad tidings for some and a threat for others. I record this reading as an observation.