al-Muṭaffifīn 83:14

Kallā bal rāna ʿalā qulūbihim mā kānū yaksibūn "No! Rather, what they were earning has coated over their hearts."

The verse of cause in the sūra. The thirteenth verse said what they say; this verse says why they say it.

The structure is the same as al-Infiṭār 82/9: kallā bal. As was taken up there, kallā rejects and bal changes direction (iḍrāb).

What is rejected is this time perfectly clear: the last word of the preceding verse — asāṭīru'l-awwalīn. The claim was set up, then demolished with a single particle.

And bal brings in the real cause: the matter is not what the text is, but what has happened to them.

In this verse there is a technical detail concerning recitation, and it serves to protect the sense.

In Arabic, when the letter ل is followed by ر, the usual rule is idghām: the lām is assimilated to the rāʾ and it is read as though "barrāna".

Here that is not done. In the transmission of Ḥafṣ there is a short pause (sakt) between بَلْ and رَانَ: the sound is cut, no breath is taken, and then it continues.

The reason is a concern for the sense: if the assimilation is made, the two words are heard as one word and the presence of the particle bal is not heard. The pause makes the particle audible as a separate word.

This pause is one of the few in the transmission of Ḥafṣ and is recorded in the books of recitation. Since I cannot give the practice in the other readings with certainty, I make no comparison.

The reason the detail is worth recording is this: a rule of recitation has been bent in order to protect the sense given by the grammar. Sound has been made subordinate to the structure of the sentence.

The densest word of the sūra.

Root: ر-ي-ن. And the concrete sense of the root carries the whole weight of the verse.

الرَّيْن (rayn): the layer that coats over a thing. The most widespread description the lexicographers give: the rust, the grime, the sediment that gathers on a bright and clean surface. The dulling that forms on a sword, on a mirror, on a copper vessel.

The uses of the verb:

• rāna'sh-shayʾu ʿalā qalbihi — a thing coated over his heart.
• rānat al-khamru ʿalā ʿaqlihi — wine coated over his mind, covered it up.
• rāna ʿalayhi'n-nawm — sleep overcame him.
• rīna bi-fulān — someone was caught by something he could not get free of.

The word has three distinguishing properties, and all three are decisive for the verse.

One. Rayn is a thin layer.

Rust is not a thick crust coating a metal. At the beginning it is a dulling that is all but invisible. The first sediment on a mirror does not make the mirror unusable; it only diminishes it a little.

And this accords with the whole logic of the sūra. The sūra opened with taṭfīf — a diminishing too small to be noticed. Now it speaks of a layer on the heart too thin to be noticed.

Two. Rayn forms by accumulation.

Rust does not form in a single go. Damp, contact, neglect — and time. A little every day. And what is critical is this: on no single day is that day's contribution noticeable.

The subject of the verb in the verse confirms this: mā kānū yaksibūn — the structure kāna + imperfect conveys in Arabic a continuing past: "what they were earning", that is, over and over, as a habit.

The layer, then, is the product of repetition.

Three. Rayn is born out of the reaction of the thing coated.

This is the most important property of the word. Rust is not a substance smeared onto a metal from outside. It is the metal itself transforming through reaction with its surroundings. Rust is not added to metal; metal becomes rust.

This point was recorded at al-Baqara 2/7: "Rust is not something smeared on from outside; it is born of the metal's own reaction."

Now we have the word itself in hand, and it confirms that finding.

The subject of the sentence has to be dwelt on, because the theological weight of the verse lies here.

The agent of the verb رَانَ is: مَّا كَانُوا۟ يَكْسِبُونَ — "what they were earning."

That is, what coats the heart is not a power coming from outside; it is the person's own earnings.

This holds a distinct place among the Qurʾān's expressions for the closing of the heart. The Qurʾān takes this subject up with several different words, and when the agents are compared a picture emerges:

What is seen in the table is this: the same phenomenon is related with several different words, and the agent changes. It is mostly ascribed to God; in one place — here — it is ascribed directly to the person's own acts.

This matter was taken up at al-Baqara 2/7, and the conclusion reached there was this:

"The seal is not a barrier placed before a human being's choice but a locking that comes as the result of choice. A person covers over first; as the covering is repeated the cover thickens; in the end the possibility of return is closed in fact. The Qurʾān ascribes this last stage to God, because it is He who creates outcomes."

Al-Muṭaffifīn 83/14 is that conclusion in a form readable from the text. In al-Baqara an inference was being made; here the Qurʾān says the same thing plainly.

In the section on al-Baqara this verse was already used as evidence, and it was cited there in translation. Now that the word itself has been analysed, the force of the evidence increases: the subject of the verb is, at the level of grammar, their earnings.

The theological note recorded in the section on al-Baqara holds here too: in the dispute between the Muʿtazila and the Sunnīs no side is taken in this commentary; and none of the parties has argued that the human being is without responsibility.

Root: ك-س-ب. To obtain, to earn, to acquire.

The Qurʾān uses this root for what a human being obtains by his own act. The clearest example is in the last verse of Sūrat al-Baqara:

"To it belongs what it has earned, and against it what it has acquired." (al-Baqara 2/286) — lahā mā kasabat wa ʿalayhā mā'ktasabat.

Two forms are used in the verse: the base form (kasabat) and iftiʿāl (iktasabat). The classical exegetes explain the difference thus: the iftiʿāl form adds effort and intent; good is obtained of itself, while evil is obtained by expending labour. This is an interpretation widely mentioned in the sources.

Attention must be paid to the commercial tone of the word. Kasb is the word for earnings in Arabic — what is obtained by working. And this sūra is a sūra of trade: the measure, the balance, taking, giving, diminishing.

That is, the verse names the thing coating over the heart an earning.

And here the tightest internal link of the sūra is set up:

What they shave off in the third verse becomes what they accumulate in the fourteenth. The twenty grams taken from the measure become the layer settling on the heart.

That is, the sūra says: what they took, they really did take. It does not say the earning is false; it says what the earning is.

The frame recorded in the section on al-ʿAṣr is completed here: khusrān is the outcome of a balance sheet. Al-Muṭaffifīn shows what the thing written into the credit column is.

I offer this link as my own reading. That the two words are found in the sūra is a datum of the text; the relation I set up between them is an interpretation.

Root: ق-ل-ب. As was recorded in the section on al-Humaza, the original sense of the root is to turn, to be turned over, to pass from state to state; the heart takes this name because it passes from state to state. The word carries its own instability in its name.

Read together with the verse, this yields a result.

The definition of the heart is "that which turns". Rust is what stops the turning: does a hinge that has rusted turn? Does a mechanism that has rusted work?

That is, rayn does not kill the heart; it stops its motion. The capacity to pass from state to state was the definition of the heart; the layer takes that capacity away.

I offer this reading as my own inference. The sense of the root was established in the section on al-Humaza; the application here is my interpretation.

And it links to the next verse of the sūra: a mirror that has taken rust reflects no image. The fifteenth verse will say exactly this — deprivation of sight.

The process the word rayn describes is something recognisable in daily life, and it needs no religious frame.

Moral sensitivity diminishes with repetition. A behaviour done for the first time causes discomfort; the second time, less; after a certain number of times, none at all. This is not a weakening of the will; it is a change in perception. The person goes on doing the same thing but no longer feels the same thing.

And the most dangerous side of the process is that no stage of it is noticeable. Nobody thinks, "today I lost a little of my sensitivity." The loss is seen only in looking back — and to be able to look back one needs a measure.

The measure the verse gives is this: not what you do, but what you feel. If you do not feel today, faced with the same behaviour, what you used to feel, it is not the behaviour that has changed.