He spells this “word” out in another verse: “Yet My word is binding: I shall surely fill Hell with jinn and humankind together” (32:13), and there are many verses of the same tenor.

Another instance is His saying, “Fulfil My covenant and I will fulfil your covenant” (2:40). He makes His covenant clear in the verse, “If you establish the prayer, give the zakah, believe in My messengers, support them, and lend Allah a goodly loan…” (5:12), and He explains their covenant by saying, “I will certainly absolve you of your misdeeds…” (5:12).

A further example is His statement, “until he reaches his ashudd (prime)” (6:152). The word ashudd can refer to the onset of puberty, to thirty, forty, sixty, and other ages, for all of these have been asserted. It is even applied to fifty, as Suhaym ibn Wathil says:

“I am a man of fifty, my strength now complete,
And the twists of fate have seasoned me.”

Yet Allah, exalted is He, makes plain that in the case of the orphan what is intended is reaching marriageable age: “When they reach marriageable age, if you perceive in them sound judgment, then hand over to them their property” (4:6).

An illustration of concision arising from an unspecified collective noun is found in Sūrat al-Dukhān: “How many gardens and springs they left behind, fields and noble dwellings, and comforts in which they had reveled! So it was—and We made another people inherit them” (44:25-28). The word “people” here is a collective noun left undefined. The same occurs in al-Aʿrāf: “We caused the people who had been oppressed to inherit the eastern parts of the land…” (7:137). In both places the identity of the “people” is left vague, but Sūrat al-Shuʿarā clarifies that they are the Children of Israel: “So We brought them out from gardens and springs, treasures and noble dwellings. Thus it was, and We made the Children of Israel inherit them” (26:57-59).