As for His saying, “the third—the other one?” [the third] (1) is an adjective describing Manat—that is, the third of the two idols in the order of mention. As for “the other,” the Arabs do not say, “the third, the other”; rather, “the other” here is an adjective describing the second. Al-Khalil said: “The final yā’ is used to harmonize with the endings of the verses, as in His saying, ‘other needs’ (Ta-Ha 20:18), where He did not say ukhar.” It was also said that the verse involves inversion in its order, its intended arrangement being: “Have you then considered al-Lat, and al-Uzza, the other one, and Manat, the third one?”

The meaning of the verse, “Have you then considered,” is: Tell us, O you who claim that al-Lat, al-Uzza, and Manat are daughters of Allah. Al-Kalbi said: “The idolaters of Mecca used to say, ‘The idols and the angels are the daughters of Allah.’ Yet whenever one of them was given news of a female child, he disliked it.”

“Is the male for you and for Him the female? That, then, is an unfair division. They are but names which you and your forefathers have named; Allah has sent down no authority for them. They follow nothing but conjecture and what the souls desire, even though guidance has certainly come to them from their Lord.” (21–23)

Allah Most High therefore rebuked them, saying: “Is the male for you and for Him the female? That, then, is an unfair division.” Ibn Abbas and Qatadah said: That is, an unjust division, since you have assigned to your Lord what you yourselves dislike. Mujahid and Muqatil said: A crooked division. Al-Hasan said: One that is not equitable.

Ibn Kathir recited it as ḍi’zā, with a hamzah, while the others recited it without a hamzah.

Al-Kisa’i said: One may say ḍāza yaḍīzu ḍayzan, ḍāza yaḍūzu ḍawzan, and ḍāza yuḍāzu ḍāzan, when someone acts unjustly and diminishes. The morphological form of ḍīzā is fuʿlā, with the first consonant bearing ḍammah, because it is an adjective; and adjectives occur only on the pattern fuʿlā, such as ḥublā (pregnant), unthā (female), and bushrā (glad tidings), or on the pattern faʿlā, with the first consonant bearing fatḥah, such as ghaḍbā (angry), sakrā (intoxicated), and ʿaṭshā (thirsty). In the speech of the Arabs, the pattern fiʿlā, with the first consonant bearing kasrah, does not occur among adjectives; rather, it occurs in nouns, such as dhikrā (reminder) and shiʿrā (poetry). The kasrah on the letter ḍād here is used so that the yā’ does not change into a wāw, since it belongs to roots whose final letter is yā’, just as they say bīḍ as the plural of abyaḍ (white), though its original form was būḍ, like ḥumr and ṣufr (red and yellow). As for the one who says ḍāza yaḍūzu, the noun derived from it is ḍūzā, like shūrā.

“They”—that is, these idols—“are but names which you and your forefathers have named; Allah has sent down no authority for them”: no proof for your claim that they are gods. Then, after addressing them directly, He returns to speaking of them in the third person: “They follow nothing but conjecture,” in their claim that they are gods, “and what the souls desire”—that is, what Satan has made fair-seeming to them—“even though guidance has certainly come to them from their Lord”: clear proof through the Book and the Messenger that they are not gods. For worship is fitting only for Allah, the One, the All-Subduer.