al-Burūj 85:12

Inna baṭsha Rabbika la-shadīd "Surely the seizing of your Lord is severe."

Root: ب-ط-ش. And this word is hard to translate, because no single English word carries it.

Baṭsh: to grasp a thing violently and roughly, to fall upon it and seize it. The word describes the movement of the hand — the clawing, the snatching, the taking hold and not letting go.

The definition the lexicographers give: al-akhdh bi-shidda — to take with violence. Bāṭish — one who grasps hard.

The three elements the word carries:

1. Suddenness — not a slow encirclement but a lunge. 2. Roughness — not gentle. 3. Not letting go — after the grasp there is no getting free.

The most striking use of the root is the one for the wrongdoers:

وَإِذَا بَطَشْتُم بَطَشْتُمْ جَبَّارِينَ "And when you seize, you seize like tyrants." (al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/130)

Hūd says this sentence to his own people. Baṭsh, that is, occurs in the Qurʾān as the act of the wrongdoers too.

The other occurrences:

• "On that day We shall seize with the greatest seizing" (al-Dukhān 44/16).
• "We destroyed those stronger than them in seizing (ashadda minhum baṭshan)" (al-Zukhruf 43/8).
• "How were My seizing and My warnings!" (the context of al-Qamar 54/36).

Now set al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/130 and al-Burūj 85/12 side by side:

The same word, two sides. The community the sūra relates possessed baṭsh: it grasped people, it threw them into the trench. The verse uses the same word of God.

This is the continuation of the method we saw in the fourth and tenth verses of the sūra: the verdict is announced in the language of the crime. To those who killed, qutila; to those who burned, ḥarīq; to those who grasped, baṭsh.

This form of address was dwelt on in the section on Sūrat al-Fīl; the finding there was that the expression rabbuka concentrates in the early Meccan sūras at the places where the Prophet is being supported, and that it builds a sentence of assurance.

Here it has the same function, and is even more apt. The sūra is relating a tyranny, and facing that tyranny there is no worldly power at all. The sentence does not say "the seizing of God is severe"; it says "of your Lord".

That is, it speaks by way of a relationship belonging to the person addressed — to the Prophet, who at that moment was without power in Mecca.

There are two elements of reinforcement in the sentence: the إِنَّ at the head and the لَـ (lām al-muzaḥlaqa) at the head of the predicate.

In Arabic the coming of these two together raises the sentence to the highest degree of certainty, and it is generally used against an addressee who denies.

And this is the grammatical datum that supports the view that the sentence is the answer to the oaths of the third verse: answers to oaths come in exactly this form.