Surah Al-Jinn 72:11
ﲳ ﲴ ﲵ ﲶ ﲷ ﲸ ﲹ ﲺ ﲻ ﲼ
And among us are the righteous, and among us are [others] not so; we were [of] divided ways.
Tafsir of Al-Jinn 72:11
Tafsir
Ruh al-Ma'ani
Verse range: 72:11
"And among us are the righteous" Meaning: those described as being in a state of righteousness regarding their own affairs and their dealings with others, inclined toward good and uprightness as dictated by sound nature, not toward evil and corruption as is the requirement of wicked souls.
"And among us are [others] less than that" Meaning: a group less than those previously mentioned. It is standard to omit the described noun when it is a part of a name governed by the preposition *min* (from) that precedes it, and the descriptor is an adverb (as is the case here) or a clause, as in the saying: "Among us are those who stayed, and among us are those who departed." By these people, they meant those who were moderate in their state of righteousness as described above—not in faith and piety, as some have claimed—because this is an explanation of their state prior to hearing the Quran, as is evidenced by the Almighty’s saying:
"We were of divided paths" As for their state after hearing it, that will be narrated in the Almighty’s saying: "And when we heard the guidance..." up to the saying: "And among us are the Muslims..."
Some have permitted that duna (less than) here carries the meaning of ghayr (other than), in which case "other than that" would encompass the purely evil ones. Regardless, the sentence "We were..." serves as an explanation of the aforementioned categorization. However, it has been said that it is more appropriate for duna to mean "other than," and the discourse implies an omitted genitive: "We were possessors of paths," meaning doctrines, or like "paths" in terms of the divergence of states, or "our paths were divided paths." The claim that this is an instance of talaqqi al-rukban (a disjointed interpolation) is not to be heeded. The lack of consideration for a metaphorical simile—so as to dispense with the estimation of "like"—is because the context is not one of hyperbole.
Al-Zamakhshari permitted tara'iq (paths) to be in the accusative case due to adverbiality by estimating fi (in), i.e., "We were in paths." This was critiqued by the argument that tariq (path) is a noun specific to a place through which one travels; thus, one does not call a house or a mosque a "path" absolutely, unless one says, "I made the mosque a path." Therefore, such a word cannot be used as an adverb except out of necessity. Sibawayh stipulated that the line of poetry: (Just as the fox trotted along the path) is anomalous, and the Noble Quran is not to be interpreted based on such cases. Some grammarians argued that it is a general adverb because every place can be traversed, and al-qudad refers to the scattered and divergent [paths]. The poet said: (The Seizer, the Extender, the Guide through His obedience / During the tribulation of the people when their desires were divided (qudad).) It is the plural of quddah, from the root qadda (to cut), as if every path, due to its distinctiveness, were cut off from the others.