another cause. Both reports may well be correct: the verse could have been revealed immediately after all of those incidents, or it may have been sent down twice—once for one reason and again for the other.

The two categories of interpretive variation we have just discussed—one arising from the diversity of names and attributes, the other from citing some of the kinds or subdivisions of the referent, as in illustrative examples—are the predominant forms of exegesis found among the early generations, whose explanations are sometimes imagined to conflict.

Some of the disagreements attributed to them stem from a wording that can bear two possibilities. This may be because the term is a homonym, such as qaswara (which can mean “archer” or “lion”) or asʿasa (which can mean “the coming of night” or “its departure”); or because the word is univocal in origin but refers to one of two entities, such as the pronouns in the verse, “Then he drew near and came down, and was two bow-lengths away, or even nearer” (al-Najm 53:8–9), or the phrases, “By the dawn, by ten nights, by the even and the odd” (al-Fajr 89:1-3), and the like.

In such cases it may be permissible to intend all the meanings cited by the early scholars, though at other times this is not allowed. Permissibility arises when: (1) the verse was revealed twice, so that one meaning is intended on one occasion and the other on another; (2) the homonymous word may legitimately convey both of its senses—a view approved by most jurists among the Mālikīs, Shāfiʿīs, Ḥanbalīs, and many theologians; or (3) the word is univocal yet general, and there is no reason to restrict its scope. Whenever both explanations are sound, the passage belongs to the second of the two categories noted above.

Another type of statement transmitted from the early scholars—mistakenly taken by some to be a disagreement—is when they express a concept with closely related, though not strictly synonymous, terms. True synonymy in the Arabic language is rare, and in Qur’anic usage it is either exceedingly scarce or nonexistent. Seldom can one word in another language render a Qur’anic term in a way that captures its entire meaning; at best it approximates it. This very quality is among the sources of the Qur’an’s inimitability.

Thus, when someone says, “On the Day when the sky will…"