وَإِذَا ٱلْبِحَارُ فُجِّرَتْ
Singular: بَحْر. Root: ب-ح-ر. The basic sense the lexicographers give is breadth and depth; the verb baḥara also means "to split, to widen". The sea is the wide hollow split open in the earth.
The word's opposite is بَرّ (barr) — the dry land, and that too carries the sense of "breadth". The two are often named together in the Qurʾān: "Through the darknesses of land and sea…" (al-Anʿām 6/97), "He knows whatever is on land and in the sea." (al-Anʿām 6/59).
Here a note on the wording must be entered that looks forward in the sūra. In the thirteenth verse of this sūra the word الأبرار (abrār) will come, and its root is ب-ر-ر; in the section on al-Baqara it was recorded that the basic sense of this root is breadth, and that from the same root comes barr — the wide dry land that stands over against the sea. So biḥār in the third verse of the sūra and abrār in the thirteenth are relatives of two words that stand facing one another in Arabic's own lexicon.
I record this as an observation about sound and association, not as a proof. The roots are separate (ب-ح-ر / ب-ر-ر) and I set up no claim of derivation between them. I merely note that the two words stand over against one another in Arabic and that both are present in the sūra.
Root: ف-ج-ر. This root was treated in detail in the section on al-Shams: its concrete sense is to split, to split open and make flow, to burst and make gush; fajr (the moment when the night is split and the light gushes out) and fujūr (the tearing of the bound that holds a person) come from the same root.
- "And We split the earth into springs; and the waters met for a matter already decreed." (al-Qamar 54/12). Noah's flood: the waters gushing from the earth and the waters coming down from the sky meet.
- "And We made a river gush forth between the two of them." (al-Kahf 18/33).
- "A spring from which the servants of God drink, making it gush and flow." (al-Insān 76/6).
- "We shall not believe you until you make a spring gush forth for us from the earth." (al-Isrāʾ 17/90).
The pattern: تفعيل (tafʿīl). The verb is not fajara but fajjara — with the doubled consonant. As was treated in the section on al-Humaza, this form conveys intensification (takthīr): the multiplicity, the spread, the repetition of the act. So not "it was split at one point" but "it was split at every point, over and over."
And the verb is passive: fujjirat — not "it split" but "it was split, it was made to flow", without the doer being named.
| View | What it means | Its ground |
|---|---|---|
| The barrier between them is removed | The screen between the seas is lifted, and all become a single body of water | Al-Raḥmān 55/19-20 says that there is a barzakh between two seas and that they do not mingle. The lifting of that barrier is the end of the order |
| They join with the waters gushing from the earth | The earth is split at every point and water gushes out, and the seas overflow | The use of the root in al-Qamar 54/12: the scene of the flood. The end would then be described as a repetition of the flood on a universal scale |
| The seas are split open and drained | The sea bed is split, the waters withdraw | The "splitting" sense of the root; and further, its being read together with the verb sujjirat (set ablaze / filled up) of al-Takwīr 81/6 |
The first and second views do not exclude one another: both recount the removal of the bound that holds the water. In my judgement this is the real information the verse carries, and which mechanism is meant cannot be settled. This is a preference; it is not binding.
Al-Raḥmān 55/19-20 must be touched on separately, because it is directly connected with the logic of the sūra:
The verse speaks of an order of bounds at work in the world. And a few verses later the same sūra will speak of the balance being set down and of not overreaching in the balance (al-Raḥmān 55/7-9). So in Sūrat al-Raḥmān the bound of water and the bound of measure are named side by side. This link will become central in the next sūra — in al-Muṭaffifīn.
As was recorded in the section on al-Shams, a fājir is "the one who splits the covering over him and comes out, who pierces the bound that holds him"; fujūr is not a lack but an overflow — like water that will not fit its vessel breaking the dyke.
The sūra builds this likeness with real water: in the third verse the seas break their dykes and overflow, and in the fourteenth those who split their bound and overflow are named. The same verb, one for water and one for man.
And there is one further layer: in the third verse the overflowing happens on that day; in the fourteenth the overflowing is an attribute already accomplished in this world. Man breaks his dyke first, the universe after.
I present this link as my own reading. The unity of the root is a fact standing in the text; the comparison I draw from it is an interpretation, and I do not ascribe it to any classical exegete.