Tafseer of The Winnowing Winds · Adh-Dhaariyat · 51:23
Then by the Lord of the heaven and earth, indeed, it is truth - just as [sure as] it is that you are speaking.
Important: The Arabic source text is always authoritative. This translation is a study aid and has not been verified by scholars — do not use it as a basis for religious proof or for deriving rulings (ahkam). When in doubt, always consult the Arabic text and a qualified scholar.
The explanation of the words of the Exalted: فَوَرَبِّ السَّمَاءِ وَالأَرْضِ إِنَّهُ لَحَقٌّ مِثْلَ مَا أَنَّكُمْ تَنْطِقُونَ (51:23) (By the Lord of the heaven and the earth, it is indeed true, just as that you speak.)
The Exalted, whose remembrance is sublime, says, while swearing by Himself to His creatures: By the Lord of the heaven and the earth, indeed, that which I have said to you, O people — that in the heaven is your provision and that which you are promised — is truly true, just as true as it is true that you speak.
Muḥammad ibn Bashshār related to us, saying: Ibn Abī ʿAdī related to us, on the authority of ʿAwf, on the authority of al-Ḥasan, concerning His words فَوَرَبِّ السَّمَاءِ وَالأرْضِ إِنَّهُ لَحَقٌّ مِثْلَ مَا أَنَّكُمْ تَنْطِقُونَ , he said: It has reached me that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: "May Allah fight a people for whom their Lord swore by Himself and who nevertheless did not believe Him."
Al-Farrāʾ said: For the joining together of "mā" and "anna" in this place there are two explanations. The first: that this accords with the custom of the Arabs of joining together two things — from the nouns or from the particles — as in the words of the poet concerning the nouns:
To the band of men who — those who, when the base ones feared the door-latch, made it [that door] rattle (5)
So he joined together "al-lāʾī" (those who) and "al-ladhīna" (who), although the one makes the other superfluous. And as in the words of another concerning the particles:
I have never seen [such a one], nor have I heard of him as today — one who tars mangy camels (6)
He joined together "mā" and "in," although both are negations, the one of which makes the other superfluous. As for the other [explanation]: if that had been rendered with "mā" alone, it would be a report that it is true and not a lie, but that is not its intent. The intent is rather: that it is truly true, just as it is true that man speaks. Do you not see that your statement "Is your speaking true?" means: is it true or a lie, whereas your statement "Is it true that you speak?" is intended as affirmation and nothing else? For this reason "anna" was inserted in order thereby to distinguish between the two meanings. He said: this, of the two explanations, is the finest in my view.
The reciters differed in the reading of His words مِثْلَ مَا أَنَّكُمْ . Most of the reciters of Medina and Basra read it as مِثْلَ مَا with the accusative (naṣb), with the meaning: it is truly true, with certain certainty, as though they directed it to the manner of the maṣdar (verbal noun). It may also be that its accusative comes because the Arabs place it in the accusative when they thereby set a noun in the nominative, so that one says: "mithlu man ʿAbdi-llāh" (like whom is ʿAbdullāh), and "ʿAbdullāh mithluka" and "anta mithlu-hu" and "mithla-hu" — both in the nominative and the accusative. It may also be that its accusative is according to the manner of the maṣdar: it is truly true, just as you speak. Most of the reciters of Kūfa and some of the people of Basra read it with the nominative: مِثْلَ مَا أَنَّكُمْ , as an adjectival qualifier (naʿt) of "al-ḥaqq" (the true).
The correct judgment concerning this, in my view, is that they are two widely current readings in the recitations of the [various] regions, close to one another in meaning, so that with whichever of the two the reciter recites, he acts correctly.
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The footnotes:
(5) This verse is among the evidentiary citations of al-Farrāʾ in Maʿānī al-Qurʾān (folio 311) for the thesis that the Arabs sometimes join together two things from the nouns or the particles when their wording differs, such as "al-lāʾī" and "al-ladhīna," which indeed have one meaning and the one of which makes the other superfluous, as in the words of the Exalted "innahu la-ḥaqqun mithla mā annakum tanṭiqūn," where He joined together "mā" and "an." The author has taken over the remainder of al-Farrāʾ's argument concerning the justification of that joining together of the two wordings. The grammarians have adduced it as evidence for the same thing for which al-Farrāʾ adduced it. See the extensive discussion of the verse in Khizānat al-adab al-kubrā of al-Baghdādī (2:529–534). The verse is attributed to Abū al-Rubays al-Thaʿlabī. Its transmission reads, as in his poem (in the Khizāna 532):
To the band of the noble ones, who, when they named their lineage and the men feared the door-latch, made [it] rattle.
He praises ʿAbdullāh ibn Jaʿfar ibn Abī Ṭālib, and this one is the owner of the she-camel that Abū al-Rubays stole, after which he praised her owner. Al-Jāḥiẓ transmitted in al-Bayān wa-l-tabyīn that the verses to which the evidentiary verse belongs were said by a poet praising thereby Usaylim ibn al-Aḥnaf al-Asadī. He said: and this one was a man of eloquence, refinement, intelligence, and standing, and he is the one about whom the poet says … the verses. Al-Zubayr ibn Bakkār said in Ansāb Quraysh: Abū al-Rubays ʿAbbād ibn Ṭahfa al-Thaʿlabī said to ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿAmr ibn ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān … the verses, among which is the verse:
To the band of the eminent ones, who, when they began and the base ones feared the door-latch, made [it] rattle.
(6) This verse is from the words of Durayd ibn al-Ṣimma, the horseman of Jusham. He had come to ʿAmr ibn al-Sharīd al-Sulamī to ask him for the hand of his daughter al-Khansāʾ. She was occupied with tarring her father's camels, and when he saw her he spoke verses in which he described her, among which:
O Khunās, the heart has become enamored of you all and it was struck by a sickness of love.
When her father told her for what the horseman of Jusham had come, she rejected him on account of his advanced age and gave preference to the sons of her uncles. See the story in the biography of al-Khansāʾ in al-Aghānī of Abū al-Faraj. The evidence in this verse is, as al-Farrāʾ said in Maʿānī al-Qurʾān: that the Arabs sometimes join together two things from the nouns and the particles when their wording differs, such as the poet's joining together of "mā" and "in" in this verse, for emphasis; and as in the words of the Exalted: "innahu la-ḥaqqun mithla mā annakum tanṭiqūn." "Mā" here is a maṣdar-particle, and likewise "an" is a particle that reduces what follows it to a maṣdar, while the one made the other superfluous.
