عَالَمِين AALAMIN Read the Qur'an in context Read the Qur'an

Al-Ghaafir غافر

In plain wordsEditorial

An editorial summary of the translations. Not a translation or tafsir.

Eighty-five verses centred on a man in Pharaoh's own family who has kept his faith hidden, arguing for Moses' life in front of the court and choosing at the end to entrust his affair to God. Around him: those who dispute the signs of God without authority, and the Hour. It opens with disconnected letters.

AALAMIN Editor · signed 29 August 2026

not a scholar — what this signature means

I am not a scholar, and nothing here asks you to treat me as one. The plain words on this site are my restatement of what the five translations shown above say, together with counts derived from the text itself — nothing more. I sign them so that a named person is accountable for every sentence, not so you'll take my word for anything. The authority on this page is the text and its translators. If my words don't match theirs, mine are the ones that are wrong.

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Every verse as a number; tap one to open it. Shaded numbers mark verses where the translations differ most.

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worded differently

Where the translators differDerived

The verses of this surah whose wording differs most, most differently worded first. Under each, the two renderings that share the fewest words are quoted in full under their translators' names; every rendering is on the verse's own page. This measures wording, not meaning.

40:75
Analysis details This verse's score: 0.81. Widest pair of the 5 renderings, at 0.92.

Edward Henry Palmer · 1880

There! for 'that ye did rejoice in the land without right; and for that ye did exult

John Medows Rodwell · 1861

This for you, because of your unrighteous insolence and immoderate joys on earth
40:14
Analysis details This verse's score: 0.78. Widest pair of the 5 renderings, at 0.90.

Talal Itani · 2012

So call upon God, with sincere devotion to Him, even though the disbelievers resent it.

Mohammed Marmaduke William Pickthall · 1930

Therefor (O believers) pray unto Allah, making religion pure for Him (only), however much the disbelievers be averse
Show all verses the translators word differently
40:20
Analysis details This verse's score: 0.74. Widest pair of the 5 renderings, at 0.86.

Talal Itani · 2012

God judges with justice, while those whom they invoke besides Him cannot judge with anything. It is God who is the Hearing, the Seeing.

Edward Henry Palmer · 1880

and God decides with truth; but those they call on beside Him do not decide at all: verily, God, He both hears and looks
40:1
Analysis details This verse's score: 0.73. Widest pair of the 5 renderings, at 1.00.

Talal Itani · 2012

Ha, Meem.

Edward Henry Palmer · 1880

‘H. M.
40:74
Analysis details This verse's score: 0.72. Widest pair of the 5 renderings, at 0.82.

Mohammed Marmaduke William Pickthall · 1930

Beside Allah? They say: They have failed us; but we used not to pray to anything before. Thus doth Allah send astray the disbelievers (in His guidance)

George Sale · 1734

besides God? They shall answer, they have withdrawn themselves from us: Yea, we called on nothing heretofore. Thus doth God lead the unbelievers into error
More about this surahDerived
Verses
85
Words
1,219
Place
Meccan
Revelation position
60th of 114 in an ordering its source does not name
Opening letters
حمٓ one of 29 surahs that open this way
Bismillah
Carried by the surah, unnumbered
Word-by-word breakdown
59.5% of 1,219 words carry an analysis
  1. 96
  2. 68
  3. 73
  4. 74
  5. 1
  6. 111
  7. 81
  8. 87
  9. 92
  10. 89
  11. 93
  12. 94
  13. 103
  14. 100
  15. 108
  16. 102
  17. 107
  18. 109
  19. 105
  20. 113
  21. 114
  22. 112
  23. 53
  24. 80
  25. 97
  26. 91
  27. 85
  28. 95
  29. 106
  30. 101
  31. 75
  32. 104
  33. 77
  34. 50
  35. 90
  36. 86
  37. 54
  38. 38
  39. 7
  40. 72
  41. 36
  42. 25
  43. 35
  44. 19
  45. 20
  46. 56
  47. 26
  48. 27
  49. 28
  50. 17
  51. 10
  52. 11
  53. 12
  54. 15
  55. 6
  56. 37
  57. 31
  58. 34
  59. 39
  60. 40
  61. 41
  62. 42
  63. 43
  64. 44
  65. 45
  66. 46
  67. 51
  68. 88
  69. 18
  70. 16
  71. 71
  72. 14
  73. 21
  74. 23
  75. 32
  76. 52
  77. 67
  78. 69
  79. 70
  80. 78
  81. 79
  82. 82
  83. 84
  84. 30
  85. 29
  86. 83
  87. 2
  88. 8
  89. 3
  90. 33
  91. 60
  92. 4
  93. 99
  94. 57
  95. 47
  96. 13
  97. 55
  98. 76
  99. 65
  100. 98
  101. 59
  102. 24
  103. 22
  104. 63
  105. 58
  106. 49
  107. 66
  108. 64
  109. 61
  110. 62
  111. 48
  112. 5
  113. 9
  114. 110

Meccan Medinan

Counted from the text and the spine at build time, not written into the page. Opening letters are derived from the edition's orthography: an opening token of at most five letters carrying none of its vocalisation marks. The revelation position is reproduced from Revelation order as encoded by the Tanzil metadata, which does not name whose ordering it is.

Analysis detailsDerived

These figures count the words the translations share. They measure wording, not meaning, and they do not say which translation is right.

Mean score across this surah
0.59 across 85 scored verses

The page says a verse is worded differently only above the cut below. The cut is a stated convention, not a property of the text, and it can be changed.

The cut
0.644
Share of measured verses above it
33%
Verses above it
2,079
Verses measured
6,236
Method Wording differences — derived 13 September 2026
Method
Mean pairwise Jaccard distance over the lowercased word sets of the cleared translations of each verse. A verse is marked as worded differently when its score falls in the top third of the corpus — the cut set out in Analysis details.
Scored
6,236 verses
As at
13 September 2026, 10:56 UTC
Sources for this page

Surah metadataTanzil Qur'an metadata ·quran-data.xml v1.0·Tanzil Project ·Creative Commons Attribution — version not specified by the source·retrieved 24 Aug 2026

Surah metadata from Tanzil Qur'an metadata (quran-data.xml, version 1.0), Tanzil Project, tanzil.net. (C) 2008-2009 Tanzil.info. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution; the source does not state a version. Values are reproduced unchanged; this site selects and arranges them, and derives verse ranges from the division start points. https://tanzil.net/res/text/metadata/quran-data.xml