لَآ أُقْسِمُ بِيَوْمِ ٱلْقِيَٰمَةِ
This pattern was treated in detail in the section on Sūrat al-Balad and four views were set out in a table: that the lā is redundant (an intensifier), that it rejects something said before, that it magnifies the oath ("there is no need to swear, it is that plain"), and that it is a shortened form of alā. The conclusion recorded there was this: none of the views is certain, the debate has not closed since the classical period, and the outcome that reaches the translation ("I swear") is the same on every reading.
I do not repeat it here. What is to be added here is that this sūra uses the pattern differently from al-Balad.
In Arabic it was not obligatory to repeat the lā for the second oath; wa bi'n-nafsi'l-lawwāma could have been said. Its repetition shows that the two oaths are not reduced to one another: these are not two elements of a single oath but two separate oaths.
And this distinction is needed in order to understand what the second verse does. The sūra swears by two things separately — one in the future, outside; one now, inside.
The debate in al-Balad has a further side that belongs to this sūra in particular. The second of the four views — that the lā rejects something said before — was found weak in al-Balad, because al-Balad did not begin in the middle of an argument. In al-Qiyāma the situation is different: in the third verse the sūra quotes an objection directly ("does he suppose that We cannot gather his bones?"), and in the sixth a question ("and when is that day?"). That is, here there really is something to be rejected, and it is visible in the text.
This makes the second view stronger for this sūra than it was in al-Balad. I write this not as a preference but as a record; the debate still does not close.
Root: ي-و-م. In Arabic yawm is not only a stretch of twenty-four hours; it also means the span of time over which a matter runs. The Arabs call a battle yawm Badr, yawm Dhī Qār; what is meant is the duration of that fighting, not a day on the calendar.
This breadth is a datum of the language to be kept in mind when reading the Qurʾān's expressions for "day". The word itself imposes no measure of duration.
Root: ق-و-م. This root was treated in five separate places in this commentary and I do not repeat them:
- al-Fātiḥa 1/6 — mustaqīm: an attribute of the path; both straightness and upright bearing.
- al-Baqara 2/3 — iqāma: keeping the prayer standing; the root's act in the servant.
- al-Tīn 95/4 — taqwīm: setting straight, giving form; causation and intensity in the tafʿīl pattern.
- al-Bayyina 98/3, 5 — qayyima: that which is itself straight and straightens others.
- al-Takwīr 81/28 — yastaqīm: what was an attribute of the path turning into an act of the person.
What is to be added here is that in this sūra the word is the name of an event. In the five uses above the root qualified a path, a religion, or a servant's act. Here it names a day — and in naming it, it says what happens on that day: there will be a rising.
As was recorded in the section on al-Muṭaffifīn, the Qurʾān draws this picture explicitly in one place:
يَوْمَ يَقُومُ ٱلنَّاسُ لِرَبِّ ٱلْعَٰلَمِينَ — "The day when people stand before the Lord of all the worlds." (al-Muṭaffifīn 83/6)
The finding recorded there was this: the verb is imperfect, that is, not standing up and sitting down again but remaining standing — waiting. And that the word qiyāma comes from this root shows that the day's name is "the rising".
| Face | Picture | Its counterpart in the root |
|---|---|---|
| The lying rise | The dead are raised upright from the grave | qāma — to get to one's feet |
| The risen wait | One stands in the Presence | qiyām — the state of standing |
And an observation, as my own reading: the same root also gives one of God's names in the Qurʾān — ٱلْقَيُّوم (al-Baqara 2/255): the one who himself stands and holds everything else standing. So the absolute state of standing belongs to Him, and the event of rising to man. The one who rises will rise, but the rising itself is also a thing that is held up. I draw this link from the shared root; the sharing of the root is a datum of the language, the conceptual relation between them is my own reading.
An oath is sworn by something the one addressed accepts. Here, what is sworn by is exactly what the one addressed rejects.
This increases the strangeness of the pattern and joins with the debate in the section on al-Balad. If lā uqsimu means "there is no need to swear by this, it is plain in itself", then the sentence is saying: that day is not something to be supported by an oath; it is clear enough to be proof itself.
And the rest of the sūra does just this: it does not defend the resurrection as a piece of news, it derives it from man's own constitution. This is exactly why the second element of the oath comes.