al-Nabaʾ 78:14-16

Wa anzalnā mina'l-muʿṣirāti māʾan thajjājā · Li-nukhrija bihī ḥabban wa nabātā · Wa jannātin alfāfā "And We sent down from the pressing ones water pouring down — that with it We might bring forth grain and plants, and gardens thickly entwined."

Root: ع-ص-ر. This root was treated in detail in the section on Sūrat al-ʿAṣr; it will not be repeated here, and the finding there will be relied on.

What was recorded there was this: the concrete sense of the root is to press — to squeeze a thing and bring out the liquid inside. ʿAṣīr (fruit juice), miʿṣara (a press), iʿṣār (a whirling storm) are all from this root. And in the section on al-ʿAṣr this verse was already named: muʿṣirāt are "those that have come to the point of releasing their load".

The word is a plural active participle (the plural of muʿṣira) and it is in Form IV: أَعْصَرَ — to come to the time of pressing, to reach the state of being pressed.

This pattern is important. The word does not mean "those that press" but "those that have come to the point of pressing" — like the pattern used in saying the tree has come to the age of bearing fruit. The cloud, that is, has not yet let go of its rain but is about to; it is too full to carry its load.

The majority's preference is "clouds" and the most natural sense of the particle مِنْ (place of origin) supports it.

But the second view is meaningful too and has a striking side: it is the wind that presses the cloud. Since the original sense of the root is "to press", using the active participle of the one that presses is linguistically the more direct.

I do not impose a preference. Both views preserve the sense of the root; the difference is whether the presser or the pressed is meant.

Root: ث-ج-ج. ثَجَّ ٱلْمَاءَ — he made water pour, he poured it out. Thajj is pouring that is copious and loud; not seeping, not dripping.

The word is again on the فَعَّال pattern — like wahhāj, conveying intensity: pouring much and hard.

A note on a hadith. In the hadith literature, in a well-known saying transmitted about the pilgrimage, two words come side by side: العج والثج — ʿajj (raising the voice in the talbiya) and thajj (making the blood of the sacrifice flow). Since I cannot give certain information about the source in which this report occurs or the wording in which it occurs, I write no source; what I record is that the word is used in Arabic in the sense of "copious pouring".

Two intensive patterns side by side. In the thirteenth verse wahhāj (blazing), in the fourteenth thajjāj (pouring). Two consecutive verses, two faʿʿāl patterns, and both fire and water — two elements opposed to one another.

I record this as an observation. That the verse-endings rhyme as well (wahhājā / thajjājā) supports the pairing by sound too.

حَبّ — Root: ح-ب-ب. A grain, a seed, a kernel. Cereal grain.

نَبَات — Root: ن-ب-ت. To sprout, to grow green. Everything that grows in the soil.

The order is meaningful. First ḥabb (grain), then nabāt (plant). And some of the exegetes distinguish the two thus: ḥabb is the cereal a human being eats, nabāt the fodder an animal eats.

This distinction is not certain; both words can be used more broadly. But the later part of the sūra supports it: in the next sūra, where the same tableau is set up, it will be said "an enjoyment for you and for your livestock" (al-Nāziʿāt 79/33).

لِنُخْرِجَ — that We might bring forth. The lām here conveys purpose: this is the reason the water was sent down.

And the verb is striking: إِخْرَاج — to bring out. To bring out from inside the earth.

This verb stands at the very centre of the sūra's argument. For the Qurʾān relates the resurrection with the same verb:

"…and God caused you to grow from the earth like a plant. Then He will return you to it and bring you out with a bringing forth." (Nūḥ 71/17-18)

"We drive it to a dead land, and with it We give life to the earth after its death. Such too is the resurrection." (Fāṭir 35/9)

"He brings the living out of the dead and the dead out of the living, and gives life to the earth after its death. And thus shall you be brought out." (al-Rūm 30/19)

All three verses say the same thing: bringing a plant out of the soil and bringing a human being out of the soil are the same operation.

And Sūrat al-Nabaʾ never states this proof — it merely counts the soil, the water and the plant that comes out. It leaves the making of the link to the reader.

This is what the sūra has been doing from the start: it does not argue; it enumerates.

جَنَّة — Root: ج-ن-ن. To cover, to conceal. جَنَّة — a garden whose trees are interlaced and which covers what is beneath it. From the same root come jinn (the unseen being), janīn (the one covered in the womb), majnūn (one whose mind is covered over), junna (a shield).

That is, a garden, as a word, means "that which covers". A garden bears this name because it covers the ground with the shade of its trees.

أَلْفَاف — Root: ل-ف-ف. To wrap, to wind, to interlace. لَفَّ — he wrapped, he wound. لَفِيف — a mixed, intermingled company.

On the word's singular the lexicographers differ: some say laff, some lafīf, some laffāʾ; and some say the singular is not used, that the word comes directly in the plural.

On the sense, however, there is no disagreement: dense gardens whose branches are interlaced, growing into one another.

Now look back over the road from the sixth verse to the sixteenth:

Bare ground (cradle) → fixed ground (peg) → paired human being → sleep → night → day → sky → sun → water → grain → thickly entwined garden.

The tableau begins from bare ground and arrives at a forest. The density increases continuously: first the ground is levelled, then fixed, then covered over, then light comes, then water comes, then a single grain appears, and at the end gardens grown into one another.

And the last word is أَلْفَاف — wound into one another. The tableau, that is, begins with eleven items counted separately and closes with a whole interlaced with itself.

I record this as my own reading; what it rests on is the order of the verses and the sense of the last word.