وَإِذَا ٱلنُّفُوسُ زُوِّجَتْ
The second half of the sūra — the setting up of the reckoning — begins here. The subject is no longer objects but persons.
Root: ز-و-ج. Zawj — a pair, a mate; the like of a thing, or what completes it. Tazwīj — to make into a pair, to pair up.
An important note about the language: the Arabic zawj does not, as the English "spouse" does, convey marriage alone. It is used of everything that comes in twos. The Qurʾān: "of every kind two, a pair (zawjayni'thnayn)" (Hūd 11/40); "noble pairs of plants" (Luqmān 31/10: zawjin karīm).
| View | What it says | Ground | Assessment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Like was brought together with like | People are grouped according to their deeds and their states | al-Ṣāffāt 37/22: "Gather those who did wrong and their kinds (azwājahum)" — there azwāj has the sense of "their likes". al-Wāqiʿa 56/7: "You will be three classes (azwājan thalātha)" — three groups, three "pairs" | The strongest. The parallel within the Qurʾān is direct, and in both places the same word carries this sense |
| The spirit was paired with the body | The resurrection is being described | Reasonable as a description of the resurrection | Possible; but the Qurʾān does not use this expression in this sense anywhere else |
| Each was paired with his deed | A person is joined to what he has done | In accord with the fourteenth verse (mā aḥḍarat) | Possible |
| The believer was paired with a houri, the denier with a satan | The distribution of requitals | It is transmitted in some commentaries | Weak: at this point of the sūra the requitals are not yet being distributed; the Garden and the Fire come in verses 12–13 |
Preference: the first view looks the stronger. Its ground is that in al-Ṣāffāt 37/22 and al-Wāqiʿa 56/7 the same word is used in the sense of "like / class", and that the context is a context of sorting. It is not binding.
And mixture is a basic feature of life in this world. A house, a market, a quarter, a family — all of them hold together people who are not in the least alike. People come together by place, by kinship, by work; not by their likeness.
The verse describes a moment at which the measure of grouping changes: the reason for being together is no longer nearness but likeness.
And note the verse that follows. The seventh verse says "like joins with like"; the eighth verse separates the murdered girl from her father. The sorting, then, comes down as far as the inside of the family. The list of flight in ʿAbasa 80/34-36 recounted the same dissolution from the other side.