وَأَذِنَتْ لِرَبِّهَا وَحُقَّتْ
| Derivative | Sense | Its link with the ear |
|---|---|---|
| أُذُن | Ear | The root itself |
| أَذِنَ لِـ | It gave ear, it listened | Directly |
| أَذِنَ لَهُ فِى | He gave permission | To listen → to accept → to permit |
| إِذْن | Permission | The same line |
| أَذَان | The call to prayer; an announcement | A call brought to the ear |
| مُؤَذِّن | The one who announces, who proclaims | This word occurs at al-Aʿrāf 7/44 |
| آذَنَ / تَأَذَّنَ | He proclaimed, he made known | "And your Lord made known…" (Ibrāhīm 14/7) |
In English there is no link between "permission" and "the ear"; in Arabic they are the same word. This is critical for understanding the verse. In Arabic, to give someone permission is really to listen to him: the request has reached the ear and has been accepted. Permission is the result of listening.
| Reading | Explanation | Assessment |
|---|---|---|
| It listened, it gave ear, it obeyed | The construction adhina li- means "he gave ear" in Arabic. The majority of the classical exegetes explain this verse as samiʿat wa aṭāʿat (it heard and obeyed) | The preposition (li-) supports this reading; there is no adhina lahū fī but directly adhinat li-Rabbihā |
| It gave permission / it accepted the command | The "permission" sense of the root | The sky's giving permission to its Lord remains strange in meaning; but it can be softened to "it bowed to the command" |
The first reading is both more settled in the language and more suited to the context. The "listening" sense of the construction is reflected in the language of hadith as well: in a report found in al-Bukhārī it is transmitted that the Prophet said God has never given ear (mā adhina) to anything as He gives ear to a prophet reciting the Qurʾān with a beautiful voice. The same construction, the same sense.
The verse said the sky was split. Then it names that splitting a listening. That is, the breaking apart is described as a form of obedience.
"Then He turned to the sky, which was smoke, and said to it and to the earth: 'Come, willingly or unwillingly.' They both said: 'We come willingly.'" (Fuṣṣilat 41/11)
There sky and earth were speaking at the moment of creation; here the same sky and earth are listening at the moment the end has come. The Qurʾān's conception of nature is seen in these two verses: sky and earth are told of as beings that take a command and give an answer. This is a language of description; the Qurʾān carries it far enough to say, as was also recorded in the section on Sūrat al-Fīl, that "nature is not a mechanism answerable to itself but an army under orders".
And from here an opposition is born — the sūra itself will set this opposition up in the twenty-first verse:
In the first part the sūra uses the verb adhinat (it gave ear); in the twenty-first verse it says "when the Qurʾān is recited to them they do not prostrate themselves". The sky that gives ear and the man who does not stand at the two ends of the same sūra.
Root: ح-ق-ق. To be fixed, to be realised, to be right and in place. Ḥaqq means both "the real" and "the share belonging to someone"; both senses come out of the idea of "what is in its right place". The same root gives ٱلْحَاقَّة (the one that is realised, that is confirmed), one of the names of the Resurrection — recorded in the table of names of the Resurrection in the section on al-Qāriʿa.
The verb in the verse is in the passive: ḥuqqat. That is, not "it became a due" but "it was made a due". Its subject is not stated; but because li-Rabbihā occurs in the preceding word, the subject is plain.
It is hard to render into English, because the construction has no counterpart there. Some approaches:
The unfolding the classical exegetes give is this: ḥuqqa lahā an tafʿala — "it had been made right and necessary for it to do so". That is, in listening the sky did nothing unexpected; it did what it was bound to do.
Two verbs come one after the other, and the relation between them carries the whole weight of the verse:
That is, the verse first gives the sky an act, then says that the act was not the sky's own invention. The sky obeyed — but obedience too was a structure given to it.
This is a rehearsal of what will be said to man at the end of the sūra. Man too enters upon a road (kādiḥ), but where that road ends is not a thing he determines (fa-mulāqīh).