Al-Waqi'ah · Makki · ayah 7 of 96

Al-Waqi'ah 56:7

وَكُنتُمْ أَزْوَٰجًا ثَلَـٰثَةً

“And you become [of] three kinds:”

Saheeh International

Essence

With the scenery gone, people are told they are three sorts, and the word for sort is the word for a spouse.

A reflection

The word is not "groups". It is "pairs".

Translations say three kinds, three groups, three classes. Each is accurate and each hides the word.

Azwāj is the plural of zawj, and a zawj is one of a pair. It is the word for a husband, and the word for a wife, and the same word is used for both. Two sandals are zawjān, the right and the left. A cock and a hen pigeon are zawjān. Each one alone is a zawj: a single thing that has its counterpart. Alone, it is not a complete description of itself.

So the ayah does not say that people are sorted into three bins. It says people turn out to be three matched sets.

One commentary draws out exactly that. Three sorts, it says, each sort resembling what belongs with it, as a spouse resembles a spouse. The sorting is not a score being applied from outside. It is a likeness becoming visible.

Notice how different that is from the picture most of us carry. We imagine a weighing: deeds counted, a line drawn, people above and below it. Weighing is in the Quran, and it is real. But this ayah is not describing a measurement. It is describing a matching, and a match is made of what a thing already is.

The root reaches wider than people. The Arabs saw pairs everywhere, and the lexicons record it. Opposites pair as well as likes: black with white, sweet with sour. Even the cloth thrown over a camel-litter was a zawj, matched to what it covered.

And one more thing is hiding in the grammar. Wa kuntum, and you were: the perfect tense, used of something still ahead. The sorting is reported as though it were already done, which is how the Quran often speaks of what is certain.

Which leaves a question an ordinary reciter can actually use. Not how will I score. What am I a match for.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.