– My Lord knows the words
This translation by Droge conceals an interesting challenge related to the Arabic text of the Quran. The first word in the verse is qāla, which means, “he said.” The same word begins the last verse in this sūra. Most translations render qāla as “he said,” but Droge has chosen an alternate reading. The source of the confusion is the ambiguity in the earliest Quran manuscripts: in the earliest manuscripts, the writing of “he said” and “Say!” (qul) was exactly the same, because Arabic at that point had neither an alif for the long “a” in qāla, nor a mark for the short “a” at the end of qāla. The issue for interpretation is whether the Quran means to say that a human speaker composes and speaks the following words, or that Allah commands the messenger to say words that the messenger then recites. Andrew Rippin explains this point further in his book, Muslims. See also “Manuscripts of the Quran”.