Commenting
on the occasional lack of perspicuity one finds in the Qur’an, Daniel Brown
wrote:
Other features of the Qur’ān fit much less
comfortably with the traditional account of its hasty compilation. Around the
time of its canonization, for example, some words and passages in the Qur’ān
were completely unintelligible to its readers. In a number of passages the
Qur’ān itself seems to acknowledge that its readers might have a hard time
understanding its language by conveniently offering explanatory glosses. In
twelve separate instances a difficult word is accompanied by the phrase “And
what shall teach you what is the . . . ,” which is then followed by an
explanation. Sūra 101 provides a double example:
In the Name of God, the Merciful, the
Compassionate. The Clatterer! What is the Clatterer? And what shall teach thee
what is the Clatterer? The day that men shall be likely scattered moths and the
mountains shall be like plucked wool tufts. Then he whose deeds weigh heavy in
the Balance shall inherit a pleasing life, but he whose deeds weigh light in
the Balance shall plunge in the womb of the Pit. And what shall teach thee what
is the Pit? A blazing Fire!
Readers were simply not expected to know what
the words translated here as “Clatterer” and “Pit” meant. Translators of the
Qur’ān still do not know, and Arberry’s (1955) translation given here is no
more than an over-confident guess. The very earliest Muslim Qur’ān commentators
also had a guess. They had no idea what to do with these and many other words
in the Qur’ān. Hence their guesses are often wildly different from one another
and simply show that no one really knew these words, and that a good part of
the language of the Qur’ān was foreign to them. If the Qur’ān was composed
during Muḥammad’s lifetime and compiled within twenty years of his death, there
is simply not enough time to allow for such widespread forgetfulness. The
language of the Qur’ān should have been familiar to its compilers and early
commentators. Clearly, it was not. (Daniel Brown, A New Introduction to Islam [Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004],
57)
With respect
to surah 101, as discussed by Brown above, note the following from The Study Quran (note: they translate
the term, not as “clatter” but “calamity”):
Calamity translates qār'iah, which comes from the verb qara'a meaning "to beat or strike something so that it makes a
deafening sound." The repetition of the question in vv. 2-3 (which is
similar to 69:2-3) is meant to emphasize the true nature of the calamity, which
is thought to be the Day of Judgment, is difficult to comprehend. Thus the
following verses do not define the
calamity, but describe some of its marks. (The Study Quran: A New
Translation and Commentary [New York: Harper One], Location 74421-47 of 90397
of Kindle edition)
