Al-A‘rāf 7:190

The issue

This verse refers to Adam and Eve. (See verse 189.) It tells us that after they were

blessed with a son, they associated others with Allah (became idolaters). Again there is

a problem in the Arabic text that is not apparent in the English translation. In the first

part of the verse, the couple is referred to in the Arabic dual form. But at the end of the

verse, it refers to them in the plural form.

What is the escape for this grammatical contradiction? Several commentators offer

these explanations:

“Most scholars said, ‘but exalted be God above that which they associate with Him.’

‘They’ means the idolaters among Arabs specifically, and he is not talking about

Adam and Eve”.

• According to al-Tabarī, “The idolaters that ascribe partners with him [Allah] did

not mean Adam and Eve”.

We find in this verse the absence of unity of thought. Even if it were possible to find

justification for such literary leaps from one group to another and from one epoch

to another within a single sūra, how can one justify the lack of care for the logical

historical sequence within the same verse? When the verse speaks of Adam and Eve,

why does it then insert the subject of the Arab pagans, particularly those “idolaters”

who, without dispute, lived in a later era and with different convictions from Adam

and Eve?.

The Islāmic apologists unintentionally criticize the eloquence of the Qur’ān, for they affirm

the existence of such discontinuity in a single verse.