al-Tawba 9:128-129 — The close of the sūra

Laqad jāʾakum rasūlun min anfusikum ʿazīzun ʿalayhi mā ʿanittum ḥarīṣun ʿalaykum bi'l-muʾminīna raʾūfun raḥīm

"There has come to you an envoy from among yourselves: your falling into distress weighs heavy on him; he cares greatly for you; and to the believers he is compassionate and merciful."

The root ع-ن-ت: to fall into difficulty, hardship. The lexicographers record the root's picture of "a bone's being hurt again as it knits after a break" — that is, the renewed injuring of something that is in the course of mending.

I convey this as the lexicographers give it.

The root ح-ر-ص: to be anxious over a thing, to want it insistently.

And here the tension I recorded in the section on structure is completed.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the two ends of the sūra: one and the same sūra opens with a declaration of dissolution and closes with a description of mercy. And between the two ends, throughout the sūra, the same distinction has been at work: the one who broke his treaty and the one who did not, the one with an excuse and the one without, the one who gives and counts it a loss and the one who gives and counts it a nearness.

The sūra, that is, takes its stand not against a community but against a behaviour — and this is the counterpart, in the sūra's own structure, of the clause of Method that says "what the verse describes are attributes".

Ḥasbiya'llāh — treated in al-Anfāl at 8/62 (fa-inna ḥasbaka'llāh) and in al-Zumar at 39/36 (a-laysa'llāhu bi-kāfin ʿabdah). I rely on that treatment.

And the sūra closes a hundred and twenty-nine verses of dissolution, expedition and distinction with a sentence of trust.