is the one who performs it during its allocated period, whereas the one who wrongs himself is he who puts off the ʿAsr prayer until the sun has turned yellow.

Others maintain that the forerunner, the moderate, and the wrongdoer are also mentioned at the end of Sūrat al-Baqarah: the beneficent appears in connection with charity, the wrongdoer with consuming usury, and the just with lawful trade. Regarding wealth, people fall into three groups—beneficent, just, and unjust. Thus the forerunner is the beneficent person who discharges the recommended acts together with the obligatory ones; the wrongdoer is he who devours usury or withholds zakāh; and the moderate is he who pays the obligatory zakāh and refrains from usury. The same line of interpretation applies to other examples of this kind.

Every statement that cites a particular type falling under the verse is made only to show the listener that the verse encompasses him and to alert him to its counterparts, for explaining something by example is often easier than spelling out an exhaustive formal definition.

Commentary
It is indeed the general rule that defining by example is clearer and more evident than defining by means of a precise, technical formulation. Imagine someone asked, “What is a camel?” and you answered, “It is a large-bodied animal, long of neck, with a hump and a short tail,” and so on. He still might not recognize it; even if he saw one, he could wonder whether it was some other, similar creature. But if you simply pointed and said, “This is a camel,” the matter would be plain. Clarification by example is more lucid.

For this reason many jurists—may Allah have mercy on them—preferred to define things through their legal ruling, even though logicians view that as a shortcoming. They would say, for example, “An obligation is that for which the doer is rewarded and the one who neglects it deserves punishment.” Were one instead to define it as “what the Lawgiver commands in a binding manner,” the concept might be harder for people to grasp.

In short, the early scholars explained the verse, “Those We have chosen from among Our servants—among them…” (Q 35:32)