You feel pain, they feel pain
تَأْلَمُونَ فَإِنَّهُمْ يَأْلَمُونَ
taʾlamūna fa-innahum yaʾlamūna — you are feeling pain, then they too feel pain
In 4:104 the root ʾ-l-m appears three times in one verse, setting the addressees' pain directly against the pain of 'the people' they are told to pursue, and the comparison is then broken by an asymmetry in what each side hopes from Allah.
The verse opens with a prohibition: 'do not lose strength in seeking out the people' (4:104). The mirror construction follows immediately: 'If you are feeling pain, then they too feel pain just as you feel pain' (4:104). The root ا ل م occurs three times. The first occurrence, taʾlamūna, is a second-person masculine plural imperfect attached to the conditional in ('if you are'); the second, yaʾlamūna, shifts to third-person masculine plural governed by the particle fa-innahum ('then they too'), and the third returns to the second person, taʾlamūna, inside the comparison kamā ('just as you feel pain'). The structure makes the two parties' pain parallel: the kamā clause explicitly equates the second occurrence with the third. The mirror is then qualified by a difference the verse itself states: 'while you hope from Allah for what they do not hope for' (4:104). So the shared verb root establishes what is equal between the two sides, and the following clause on hoping (tarjūna / lā yarjūna) establishes what is not. The verse closes with 'And Allah has always been All-Knowing, All-Wise' (4:104). Within the verse's own words, the mirror functions rhetorically as a reason not to weaken: the pursued people hold no advantage in suffering, and the addressees hold an advantage in what they hope for.
Where it occurs
- 4:104 The verse uses the root ا ل م three times to equate the addressees' pain with the pain of 'the people' they pursue, before marking a difference in what each side hopes from Allah.
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