Say ‘If God had willed I would not have recited it to you nor would He have made it known to you nor would He have made you aware of it the lā of wa-lā adrākum is for negation and is a supplement to what preceded; a variant reading has the lām sc. la-adrākum ‘He would have made it known to you’ as the response to the conditional law ‘if’ in other words He would have made it known to you by the tongue of someone other than myself. For I have already dwelt among you a whole lifetime of forty years before this Qur’ān not relating to you anything of the sort so will you not understand?’ that this Qur’ān is not from myself?