Led astray, to lead astray
أَغْوَيْتَنِى لَأُزَيِّنَنَّ لَهُمْ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ وَلَأُغْوِيَنَّهُمْ
aghwaytanī ... wa-la-ughawiyannahum — You have led me astray ... and I will surely lead them all astray
In (15:39) the speaker takes the action done to him—being led astray by his Lord—and vows to perform the same action on others, so the verse turns a received act into a projected one within a single speech.
Verse (15:39) uses the root غ و ي twice in one utterance, in the same derived form (IV). The first occurrence, أَغْوَيْتَنِى, is a perfect 2MS verb with a 1S object pronoun: the speaker addresses his Lord, "because You have led me astray". The second, وَلَأُغْوِيَنَّهُمْ, is a 1S imperfect with a 3MP object pronoun, marked with the emphatic لَ and the نّ of certitude: "I will surely lead them all astray". The action thus passes between three parties in one verse: from the Lord to the speaker, and from the speaker to "them". The verse's own syntax binds the two halves causally: the particle بِمَا prefixed to the perfect makes the second vow a response to the first act, and the وَ joins the vow to lead astray to the vow to adorn (لَأُزَيِّنَنَّ) as two coordinated purposes. The speaker does not dispute the first act; he builds his declared course of action on it. The objects differ in person and number—1S then 3MP—and the tense shifts from perfect (a completed act upon the speaker) to imperfect with emphatic marking (a vowed act upon others), a shift the verse itself presents as cause and announced consequence.
Where it occurs
- 15:39 The speaker cites his Lord's leading him astray as the stated ground for his vow to lead others astray, using the same root and form for both acts.
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