وَالأَرضِ ذاتِ الصَّدعِ
By the furrowed earth.
EXEGESIS
Ṣadʿ (furrowed) means the breaking or cleaving of hard objects such as rocks, iron, or glass. Hence, as reported from Ibn Abbas, Qatādah, and others, the furrowed earth here is related to the rain spoken of in the previous verse, which falls on the earth and causes it to cleave open as seeds begin to grow and push plants out from underneath the solid ground, making the earth furrowed. As mentioned elsewhere, We poured down water plenteously, then We split the earth into fissures (80:25-26).
EXPOSITION
By alluding to plants growing out of the earth, the verse should bring to mind the resurrection, when the dead will climb out of the earth. However, the word ṣadʿ is also cleverly alluding to earlier and coming verses in the surah. The cleaving of hard objects (al-ajsām al-ṣulbah) brings to mind the hard back of man (ṣulb) mentioned in verse 7. It also foreshadows verse 13, It is indeed a decisive word, as ṣadʿ has the figurative meaning of saying something decisive, as in: So proclaim (faṣdaʿ) what you have been commanded (15:94).
REVIEW OF TAFSĪR LITERATURE
Rāzī has suggested that the verse in question alludes to the earlier verses that spoke of a human being created from a man and a woman, by proposing that the sky in the previous verse is like the father, whose water fertilises the earth, which in turn is like the mother.
Mullā Ṣadrā has a far more esoteric interpretation of the verse, asserting that earth here means the heart of man, by which he means its speaking or logical soul from which his intellect flows forth, like the sky. The resurgent sky to Mullā Ṣadrā then is the ‘active intellect’ that takes the soul of man from this world to the higher realms. However, these statements seem to have taken the verse as inspiration for a philosophical discussion, rather than being an interpretation of them.
[1] Raghib, p. 478.
[2] Tibyan, 10/326.
[3] Razi, 31/123.
[4] Sadra, 7/350-351.