They schemed, We schemed
وَمَكَرُوا۟ مَكْرًا وَمَكْرْنَا مَكْرًا
wa-makarū makran wa-makarnā makran — So they devised a scheme, and We devised a scheme
In (27:50) the root م ك ر appears four times in two parallel verb-plus-object pairs, one attributed to an unnamed 'they' and one to the first-person plural speaker, so that the second action answers the first with the same word.
Verse (27:50) builds a single sentence out of two matching pairs. The first pair is وَمَكَرُوا۟ مَكْرًا, a third-person masculine plural perfect verb followed by an indefinite accusative cognate noun, 'they devised a scheme'. The second pair is وَمَكَرْنَا مَكْرًا, a first-person plural perfect verb with the same cognate noun, 'We devised a scheme'. The two pairs are grammatically parallel: same root, same verb form, same perfect tense, same cognate object مَكْرًا. What changes is only the agent — from the 3MP pronoun suffix on the first verb to the 1P suffix on the second — so the verse's own words present the second scheming as a reply to the first, executed by a different party. The verse then closes with وَهُمْ لَا يَشْعُرُونَ, 'while they were not aware', which the verse attaches to the same 'they' of the first verb: the ones who devised the first scheme are the ones unaware, and the verse does not say of what they are unaware beyond the juxtaposition itself. The verse names no parties beyond the pronouns and gives no content to either scheme within its own wording; the mirroring is carried entirely by the repeated root and the shift of person. The effect visible in the verse is that the reply is stated in the identical terms as the original act, leaving the two actions lexically indistinguishable and separated only by who performs them.
Where it occurs
- 27:50 The verse pairs a third-person plural scheming with a first-person plural scheming in identical grammatical form, closing with the schemers' unawareness.
All Qur'anic expressions