al-Mursalāt 77:29

Inṭaliqū ilā mā kuntum bihī tukadhdhibūn "Go towards what you used to deny!"

Here the sūra passes from narration to address. For twenty-eight verses it had spoken in the third person (al-mukadhdhibīn, al-mujrimīn); now there is a direct call: "go".

Root: ط-ل-ق. The idea beneath the root is the loosing of a bond, being set free, being released.

• طَلَاق — the loosing of the bond of marriage. The Turkish talak comes from this.
• طَلِيق — one who has been set free, released.
• طَلْق — easy, unimpeded; wajh ṭalq — an open face.
• ٱنْطَلَقَ (the infiʿāl form) — he set out, he was loosed and went, he moved.

The nicety of the root lies here. Inṭaliq is not a neutral way of saying "go". Its root conveys being set free: what is loosed from its bond goes.

This produces the harshest side of the verse. The command stands like an order of consignment — but the root of the word implies that those who go are released in the direction they themselves have chosen.

And the object of the verse confirms this: "towards what you denied." The place gone to is the thing the addressee took his own position on.

I record this as my own reading; the sense of the root is not in dispute.

Another occurrence of the verb in the Qurʾān: in Sūrat al-Qalam, the morning setting-out of the men who went to gather their garden is told with this verb — fa'nṭalaqū wa hum yatakhāfatūn (68/23), "they set out, whispering to one another". There too the word tells of a group setting out together.

In the seventh verse of the sūra it was said "what you are promised", and what was promised was not said. For fourteen verses the refrain said "the deniers", and what they denied was not said.

Here the object is given — but again indirectly: "what you denied".

That is, the sūra does not name the object plainly; it describes it by the addressee's own stance. It is not named, it is pointed at.

The consequence is this: the object is defined by the addressee's own refusal. He goes towards what he denied. And in the thirtieth verse it will be seen what that thing is.

كُنتُم … تُكَذِّبُونَ — kāna + imperfect. In Arabic this combination conveys continuity and habit: "you kept denying", "denying was your constant state". Not a word said once but a position held through a lifetime.

And this pattern will occur once more in the sūra — but on the other side: bimā kuntum taʿmalūn (43) — "for what you used to do". The same pattern, in two tableaux: one telling of a continuous refusal, the other of continuous work.

I record this as a symmetry of wording.