خُلِقَ مِن مَّآءٍ دَافِقٍ
The answer to the question of the previous verse. And note: the question was put to man, and the text gave the answer. The command to look was issued, but what would be seen on looking was stated too. Here the Qurʾān does not leave the one addressed on his own.
The repetition of the verb is meaningful too: khuliqa in verse 5, khuliqa again in verse 6. The verb of the question is repeated unchanged in the answer. The answer is given in the words of the question.
The verb is passive: "he was created", and the name of the creator is not given. This is a choice often met with in the Qurʾān where the agent is plain, and it does two things: it shifts the subject from the agent to the act, and it brings forward the position of the one addressed. Here man stands not as the doer but as the thing done — the whole argument of the verse rests on this.
The word is indefinite: māʾin — "a water". The indefiniteness here works in the direction of taḥqīr (belittling): an ordinary fluid, one not even given a name.
The last verse is like an expanded form of al-Ṭāriq 5-6: the same beginning, the same conclusion — the disproportion between origin and pride.
Root: د-ف-ق. Its original sense is water's pouring out with force and all together, emptying out, gushing.
- دَفَقَ ٱلْمَاءَ — he poured the water out, he emptied it.
- تَدَفَّقَ — it flowed over, it gushed.
- دُفَّاق — water running like a flood.
The word describes not a flowing drop by drop but an emptying out at one go and under pressure. The English "to gush" is the nearest equivalent.
Dāfiq is an active participle: "pouring, making gush". Yet the water is not what pours but what is poured. The word to be expected would have been madfūq (poured out).
| Explanation | How it is put |
|---|---|
| A sense of relation | Dāfiq = "possessor of dafq", that is, "carrying the property of gushing". Like the Arabic words lābin (having milk), tāmir (having dates). The pattern of the active participle here means not "the one who does" but "the one who has" |
| The intransitive use of the verb | Dafaqa'l-māʾu — it is used intransitively too, "the water gushed". In that case the water really is the agent and the active participle is in place |
| The active participle coming with the sense of the passive | A use recorded in Arabic; dāfiq = madfūq. This explanation has found acceptance, but has not been preferred as much as the other two |
The second explanation is the easiest linguistically, and it yields a conclusion worth recording: the water is named as the subject of its own gushing. That is, the verse pictures man's origin not as a passive substance but as something in motion.
We saw something like this distinction in the word rāḍiya in Sūrat al-Qāriʿa: there too the choice of the active pattern was dwelt on.
What the verse says is simple, and hard precisely for that reason: man's beginning is a handful of fluid.
First, it settles the question of possibility. To bring out of a fluid a being that hears, sees, speaks and objects — this is a thing that has already been done. To bring the same being back after it has mingled with the soil is no harder than the first. The Qurʾān makes this comparison openly elsewhere: "Were We then wearied by the first creation?" (Qāf 50/15).
Second, it cuts pride off. In the last section of the sūra those who lay plots will be spoken of. To lay a plot is a claim to power. The verse recalls where that power came out of.