al-Bayyina 98:8

Jazāʾuhum ʿinda rabbihim jannātu ʿadnin tajrī min taḥtihā'l-anhāru khālidīna fīhā abadā; raḍiya'llāhu ʿanhum wa raḍū ʿanh; dhālika li-man khashiya rabbah

"Their reward, with their Lord, is gardens of ʿAdn beneath which rivers run; they abide therein for ever. God is well pleased with them, and they are well pleased with Him. That is for whoever holds his Lord in awe."

The sūra's longest and most laden verse. It consists of five pieces, and each piece rises above the one before it:

1. جزاؤهم عند ربهم — the place of the reward: with their Lord. 2. جنات عدن — the name of the reward: gardens to settle in. 3. تجري من تحتها الأنهار … خالدين فيها أبدا — the quality of the reward: water and continuance. 4. رضي الله عنهم ورضوا عنه — the summit of the reward: mutual contentment. 5. ذلك لمن خشي ربه — the condition of the reward: awe.

What must be noticed is where the fourth piece stands. It comes after the description of the Garden. Having enumerated the gardens, the rivers and the everlastingness, the sūra stops and adds one thing more, as though to say "but here is the real thing".

Root ج ز ي (j-z-y): to requite, to pay, to stand in the place of, to suffice.

The root has an interesting side: jazāʾ is a neutral word in Arabic. It can mean both reward and punishment; it is "the giving of what is deserved". In Turkish the borrowed word narrowed and only the negative side remained (ceza, "punishment"). English splits the two sides across two unconnected words, reward and penalty, though the older "requital" still spans both. In the verse it is the positive side that is used.

The root's second sense — to suffice, to stand in another's place — is more interesting still: "And guard yourselves against a Day when no soul will pay anything on behalf of another (lā tajzī nafsun ʿan nafsin shayʾan)" (al-Baqara 2/48). There jazāʾ has the sense of "standing in another's place, sufficing on his behalf".

When the two senses are put together this comes out: jazāʾ is what is the exact counterpart of a thing, what answers to it, what covers it. Neither more nor less.

Before saying what the reward is, the verse says where it is. This order is no accident.

عِند (ʿinda) is in Arabic an adverb of place, but it mostly conveys not physical location so much as nearness and presence. Like the English "at", "with", "in the keeping of".

And what it says here is this: the reward is not waiting in a storehouse. It is beside the giver. To reach the reward is the same movement as reaching the one who gives it.

This expression is repeated in the Qurʾān like a formula, and the places where it recurs are telling:

• "…whoever believes in God and the Last Day and does righteous work, for them is their reward with their Lord" (al-Baqara 2/62; al-Māʾida 5/69). These verses occur in the context of the People of the Book and the Sabians — a balance within the Qurʾān as to how al-Bayyina 98/6 is to be read.
• "Do not suppose those killed in the way of God to be dead; rather they are alive, provided for with their Lord" (Āl ʿImrān 3/169).

The analysis of the word رَبّ was made in the section on al-Fātiḥa; I do not repeat it here. Let me only draw attention to the pronoun: rabbihim — "their Lord". And again at the end of the verse: rabbah — "his Lord". The possessive pronoun is used twice. The relation is not abstract but owned.

جَنَّة (janna) — root ج ن ن (j-n-n): to cover, to conceal, to hide.

This is one of the most productive roots in Arabic, and its derivatives show very well what the word says:

• جَنِين (janīn) — the child in the womb; because it is covered.
• جِنّ (jinn) — beings hidden from sight.
• مَجْنُون (majnūn) — a person whose mind is covered over.
• جُنَّة (junna) — a shield; the thing one hides behind for protection.
• جَنَان (janān) — the heart; because it is hidden inside the breast.
• أَجَنَّ اللَّيْلُ (ajanna'l-layl) — the night covered. In the Qurʾān: "When the night covered him…" (al-Anʿām 6/76).

And a janna is a garden whose trees are so dense that they cover the ground. The word, that is, is not the general name for a garden; it is the name of a garden of a certain density. The shade is inside the word.

In a language spoken in the desert one must consider what this description means: uncovered ground is ground open to the sun and to drought. Covered ground is protected ground. The word janna does not describe a landscape; it describes a protection.

عَدْن (ʿadn) — root ع د ن (ʿ-d-n): to settle in a place, to stay, to stand fixed.

The best-known derivative of this root is still in use today: مَعْدِن (maʿdin), a mine. English has no word from this root; the Turkish maden is this Arabic word itself. A mine is the place where an ore has settled and been fixed inside the earth. This is the sense of the root: a thing standing in its own place, not to leave it.

So jannātu ʿadn = gardens that are settled in. Not lodged in, but settled in. Not a temporary halt but a dwelling.

The choice of this word is meaningful, because from beginning to end the sūra had been recounting placelessness: an undissolved mass (1), division (4), the splitting into factions. What is given to people at the end of the sūra is a place. And the root of the word says that this place will never be left again.

The Qurʾān's most frequently repeated description of the Garden. Three details:

1. "min taḥtihā" — from beneath. The water runs not over but under. Not a stream passing beside the garden; a network of water circulating beneath the garden. The water, that is, is not an element of the scenery but the ground. What the garden stands on is water.

This detail speaks in the language of an arid country. There the continuance of a garden depends not on the water one sees but on the water lying beneath. Water that is seen evaporates; the water below remains.

2. أَنْهَار (anhār) — root ن ه ر (n-h-r). In Arabic the word nahr is properly not the water itself but the bed the water runs in — a channel opened out wide. In the sense of the root there is "breadth, opening out". From the same root comes nahār (daytime); some of the lexicographers explain this by "the broad spreading of light". I transmit this connection with caution; it is not undisputed.

3. The verb is imperfect: تَجْرِى. "Running". Continuance. The description is not a frozen picture but something in movement.

For khālidīn see the note at verse 6. The added word here:

أَبَدًا (abadan) — root أ ب د (a-b-d): time continuing without a break, a duration that has no end. In Arabic the word is generally used in negative sentences with the sense of "never" (lā afʿaluhū abadan — I shall never do this); in an affirmative sentence it becomes "for ever".

Khālidīna fīhā already conveyed continuance. The addition of abadan closes off every possibility of a limit within that continuance. The two words together set up the concept known in the tradition of kalām as everlasting abiding.

The sūra's summit. And one of the most striking sentence structures in the Qurʾān.

رِضًى (riḍan) — root ر ض و / ر ض ي (r-ḍ-w / r-ḍ-y): to be well pleased, to approve, to accept, to be content.

The word's opposite is سَخَط (sakhaṭ) — displeasure, anger, refusal to accept. The Qurʾān sets out this opposition plainly: "Is one who follows the good pleasure of God like one who has drawn upon himself God's displeasure (sakhaṭ)?" (Āl ʿImrān 3/162).

Riḍā is not merely "approving". Within it there is finding sufficient: the one who is content seeks nothing else. This is why riḍā is less a feeling than a stance — the stopping of the search.

The structure of the sentence. Two separate clauses, the same verb, the subjects exchanged:

Each clause is the other's image in a mirror. The same verb, the same particle, opposite directions.

To see why this matters so much, consider the version that does not exist:

"God is well pleased with them." — On its own this too is a reward, and a complete one. The verse could have ended here.

But it does not end. The second half is added: "and they are well pleased with Him."

This addition has three separate consequences:

1. The servant's attitude is entered in the record. The verse says that a created being can have an attitude towards his Creator, and that this matters. This is an unusual thing in religious language. What is generally expected of the servant is obedience, acceptance, submission; but "being well pleased" is different from these. Obedience is possible while unwilling; contentment is not.

2. It is implied that the contrary is possible. A thing is praised only because it is possible. If the verse counts the servant's contentment with God a part of the reward, then not being content is possible too. The Qurʾān does not conceal this:

• "And among people is one who serves God upon an edge: if good touches him he is at rest in it; but if a trial comes he turns about on his face" (the sense of al-Ḥajj 22/11). This person is not content; he is gratified — and gratification is conditional.
• al-Tawba 9/58-59 recounts those who are pleased if they are given a share of the alms and angry if they are not, and then says: "If only they had been content with what God and His Messenger gave them."

Riḍā, then, is not an automatic by-product of belief. It is a separate achievement.

3. The order is meaningful. God's good pleasure comes first, and the servant's after. This order cannot be reversed, because the servant's contentment is an answer. A person becomes content when he knows that he is found pleasing. The stillness comes first from outside.

The verse described the Garden: gardens, rivers, everlastingness. Then it added contentment. Why this order?

Because a gift does not close the distance between giver and receiver. You may give someone a very valuable thing and the coldness between you may persist. A gift is an object; riḍā is a relation.

The Qurʾān sets this hierarchy out plainly in one place. In Sūrat al-Tawba, immediately after the Garden has been described, this sentence comes:

وَرِضْوَٰنٌ مِّنَ ٱللَّهِ أَكْبَرُ ۚ ذَٰلِكَ هُوَ ٱلْفَوْزُ ٱلْعَظِيمُ "And a good pleasure (riḍwān) from God is greater. That is the mighty triumph." (al-Tawba 9/72)

"Is greater" — than what? Than the gardens and the dwellings enumerated just before. The verse makes the comparison itself, and sets contentment above them.

al-Bayyina 98/8 says the same by a different route, by sequence: it finishes the description, and then adds contentment.

And there is this too: the setting of "being well pleased" as the summit of the reward redefines the aim of service as well. If the place to be reached is a state of contentment, then everything done up to that point — prayer, alms, sincerity, being a ḥanīf — is not an activity of earning a reward but an activity of forming a relation. The reward is the relation itself.

This is at the same time a measure that keeps piety from turning into creditorship: a creditor does not look for contentment, he looks for his due. Where contentment is the goal, the language of accounting collapses.

The Qurʾān frames this two-sided contentment in one more place, this time as two adjectives:

يَٰٓأَيَّتُهَا ٱلنَّفْسُ ٱلْمُطْمَئِنَّةُ ۝ ٱرْجِعِىٓ إِلَىٰ رَبِّكِ رَاضِيَةً مَّرْضِيَّةً "O soul at rest! Return to your Lord, well pleased and well pleasing." (al-Fajr 89/27-28)

There two patterns of the same root come side by side: رَاضِيَة (an active participle: the one who is content) and مَّرْضِيَّة (a passive participle: the one with whom one is content). What is framed in al-Bayyina with two verbs is framed in al-Fajr with two adjectives.

And in another place the servant's reaching a state of contentment is set down as a promise, as the last point of the giving: "Your Lord will give to you, and you will be content" (al-Ḍuḥā 93/5). Contentment, that is, is marked again and again in the Qurʾān as the last stop; not an intermediate stage.

The sūra's last sentence. And a conditional one.

All that description — gardens, rivers, everlastingness, mutual contentment — ends with a qualification. The qualification is not a group name; it is again an attribute: li-man khashiya rabbah — "for whoever holds his Lord in awe."

The sentence does not say "for the believers". It does not say "for such and such an umma". It says مَنْ (man) — "whoever". The most open-ended relative pronoun in Arabic. Here too, as in verse 7, the sūra defines the door not by a name but by an act.

خَشِىَ — root خ ش ي (kh-sh-y).

Arabic has more than one word for fear, and the lexicographers distinguish between them. The distinction most treated is that between khawf and khashya:

This distinction is widely treated in the classical linguistic and exegetical literature. In summary: khawf comes from the harm of the thing feared; khashya comes from the thing itself. A person feels khawf before an animal he does not know; a person feels khashya before a great man he does know.

The Qurʾān itself makes this connection. The verse tying awe to knowledge is plain:

إِنَّمَا يَخْشَى ٱللَّهَ مِنْ عِبَادِهِ ٱلْعُلَمَٰٓؤُاْ "Only those of His servants who have knowledge hold God in awe." (Fāṭir 35/28)

Innamā here conveys restriction: only. This is the connection the Qurʾān makes between awe and knowledge — awe is what knowledge amounts to in the feelings.

A caution: khashya must not be confused with khushūʿ. خَشْيَة (kh-sh-y) and خُشُوع (kh-sh-ʿ) are different roots, and in transliteration they fall very close to one another. Khushūʿ is lowering oneself, submission, stillness (al-Muʾminūn 23/2: "those who are humble in their prayers"). Khashya is a reverent fear resting on knowledge. They are not from the same root.

This is the sūra's most elegant close, and I do not think it accidental.

The sūra opened with a knowledge: al-bayyina — the distinguishing proof that comes from outside. The sūra closes with a state produced by knowledge: khashya — the mark that knowledge leaves in a person.

What happens in between is what knowledge does in a person. The same bayyina had produced two different results: one part divided (4), one part believed and did deeds (7). Where did the difference arise?

The last verse gives the answer: in awe. Where knowledge does not turn into awe, knowledge turns into division. Knowledge on its own does not set a direction; what turns it in one direction is the knower's attitude towards what he knows.

And this sets up an exact opposition with the baghy of verse 4:

• Baghy — taking the knowledge and using it to enlarge one's own share. Knowledge becomes an instrument of superiority.
• Khashya — taking the knowledge and growing smaller. Knowledge becomes an instrument of knowing oneself.

The same bayyina, two attitudes, two results. The sūra's whole argument gathers in this opposition.

رَبَّهُۥ — "his own Lord". Note the possessive pronoun in the last word. Awe is not towards an abstract high power; it is towards a person's own Lord. The relation is singular and owned. Having recounted the dividing of crowds, the sūra ends by coming down to a single person.