The Qur’anic Root J F A
Jufāʾ: Foam and Cast-Off Material, from Floodwater to the Qur’anic Parable of Truth and Falsehood
Qur’anic and lexical forms
جُفَاءً
(jufāʾan)
Sole Qur’anic form; Al-Raʿd 13:17
جَفَأَ
(jafaʾa)
Form I; not Qur’anic
جَفْء
(jafʾ)
Verbal noun; not Qur’anic
جُفَاء
(jufāʾ)
Lexical form; accusative with tanwīn in the Qur’an
أَجْفَأَ
(ajfaʾa)
Form IV; some applications disputed
إِجْفَاء
(ijfāʾ)
Form IV verbal noun; not Qur’anic
اجْتَفَأَ
(ijtafaʾa)
Form VIII; not Qur’anic
تَجَفَّأَ
(tajaffaʾa)
Form V; not Qur’anic
1. Introducing the root
The Arabic triliteral root J F A concerns driving away, casting out, pushing aside, and removing something from its former place. A familiar application describes a torrent carrying foam, debris, and floating material and driving them toward its banks. Another describes a boiling pot throwing out its froth.
Within this field, jufāʾ denotes foam and material cast out by water or a pot. More broadly, it can describe something discarded, separated from the main substance, and no longer worth keeping or useful.
Early Arabic does not restrict jafaʾa to foam and torrents. The family also includes overturning a pot, throwing someone to the ground, uprooting vegetation, and expelling something.
These uses share displacement from a previous condition or position. Yet overturning a pot, uprooting vegetation, and sweeping away flood foam are distinct actions; they should not be collapsed into one physical process. Brief root meaning: Driving away and casting out; jufāʾ is foam and material cast aside.
The Qur’an uses this root only once, as jufāʾan in Al-Raʿd 13:17:
Quranic Arabic Corpus: one occurrence at 13:17
“Fa-ammā al-zabadu fa-yadhhabu jufāʾan.”
The phrase concerns foam passing away as something driven or cast aside.
The verse employs this image in a parable of truth and falsehood. Opposite the departing foam, what benefits people remains in the earth.
Understanding the root requires distinguishing foam as a tangible substance or condition, its displacement, and the figurative significance of that process for truth and falsehood.
Jufāʾ is not itself the name of truth or falsehood. It describes a physical condition used by the Qur’an to illuminate their difference.
2. Important forms and derivatives
Arabic lexical sources record the following forms in this family.
Jafaʾa: A Form I verb meaning to drive away, cast out, or throw aside. Applied to a torrent, it concerns expelling foam and debris.
Jafʾ: The verbal noun of jafaʾa, expressing driving away, casting out, or pushing aside.
Jufāʾ: Foam, debris, or material driven out by water. Some uses also concern something discarded or useless.
Ajfaʾa: A Form IV verb used for casting out foam or driving something away. Lexicographers disagree over the currency and acceptability of some applications.
Ijfāʾ: The verbal noun of ajfaʾa, expressing casting out or setting aside in the relevant uses.
Ijtafaʾa: A Form VIII verb recorded for uprooting vegetation or another object and throwing it away.
Tajaffaʾa: A verb used in some early expressions for land whose vegetation or produce has disappeared.
The family also contains expressions for throwing someone to the ground and overturning a vessel.
Of all these forms, only jufāʾan occurs in the Qur’an.
Vocalization matters in root analysis. Jufāʾ, with initial ḍammah and final hamzah, resembles jafāʾ meaning harshness or unkindness, but the two uses require separate examination.
3. The semantic core: Expulsion and separation
Floodwater and foam
Al-Jawharī writes in Al-Ṣiḥāḥ:
الْجُفَاءُ: مَا نَفَاهُ السَّيْلُ.
al-jufāʾu mā nafāhu al-sayl
Translation: “Jufāʾ is what the torrent drives away.”
Nafāhu is significant: nafā concerns driving away and removing.
This definition does more than name material on water. It also considers that material’s relation to the torrent’s movement and expulsion.
A torrent may carry soil, leaves, branches, debris, and other light matter. Some collects with foam on the surface and is swept toward the banks or deposited elsewhere.
In that situation, the material separated from the water or driven aside is called jufāʾ.
The image directly relates to the Qur’anic use.
Jafaʾa al-wādī ghuthāʾahu
Lisān al-ʿArab records:
جَفَأَ الْوَادِي غُثَاءَهُ يَجْفَأُ جَفْأً: رَمَى بِالزَّبَدِ وَالْقَذَى.
jafaʾa al-wādī ghuthāʾahu yajfaʾu jafʾan ramā bi-al-zabadi wa-al-qadhā
Translation: “The valley jafaʾa its debris: it cast out foam and unwanted matter.”
Lisān: expelling foam and debris
Al-wādī here is a valley through which water flows.
Ghuthāʾ concerns debris and light scattered matter carried by water. Qadhā denotes unwanted particles or impurities in water or elsewhere.
Such matter may move with the water, gather on its surface, or be driven toward the valley’s sides.
Jafaʾa emphasizes that movement and expulsion.
The root therefore concerns more than foam alone: it also involves driving away foam and accompanying material.
A pot casting out its froth
The same sources state:
جَفَأَتِ الْقِدْرُ: رَمَتْ بِزَبَدِهَا عِنْدَ الْغَلَيَانِ.
jafaʾati al-qidru ramat bi-zabadihā ʿinda al-ghalayān
Translation: “The pot jafaʾat: it threw out its froth while boiling.”
Lisān: a pot’s froth during boiling
When liquid boils in a pot, froth and floating matter may gather on its surface.
As boiling intensifies, they may rise and spill over the rim.
Here too, the main substance, surface froth, and the latter’s departure are related.
A torrent and a pot differ in scale and conditions, but in both, foam or accompanying matter leaves its former position.
This resemblance underlies their treatment within one lexical family.
Does jufāʾ mean only foam?
Some sources gloss jufāʾ directly as foam; others include material cast out by a torrent.
Its scope can thus extend to debris or floating matter driven aside with the foam.
This does not mean that every discarded material must be called jufāʾ in Arabic.
Its clearest established applications involve foam, debris, and what a torrent or pot throws out.
A Qur’anic translation should preserve that image.
4. Other early Arabic uses
Overturning a pot and pouring out its contents
Al-Ṣiḥāḥ and Lisān al-ʿArab record jafaʾa al-qidra.
Here someone overturns or tilts a pot, pouring out its contents.
This differs from froth rising during boiling.
In one use, boiling makes the pot cast out its own froth; in the other, a person tips the vessel and empties it.
Both can be expressed with jafaʾa because pouring out or casting is present.
Their practical difference must nevertheless remain clear.
Overturning a vessel is not boiling, and pouring out its contents need not involve foam.
Throwing someone to the ground
Al-Jawharī writes:
وَجَفَأْتُ الرَّجُلَ أَيْضًا: صَرَعْتُهُ.
wa-jafaʾtu al-rajula ayḍan ṣaraʿtuhu
Translation: “I also jafaʾtu the man: I threw him to the ground.”
The person leaves a standing posture or former position and falls to the ground.
Lisān also records an expression for dashing or throwing someone onto the ground.
This demonstrates that jafaʾa extends beyond water foam.
Here the object is a person being thrown, rather than floating material separated from a torrent.
The verb’s object therefore matters for precise interpretation.
With foam or debris, expulsion is meant; with a person, throwing or casting him down is intended.
Uprooting vegetation
Lexical sources record ijtafaʾa al-baqla for pulling vegetation from its place and throwing it away.
The plant is separated from the ground.
Some accounts also use this verb or related forms for cutting vegetation.
Uprooting a plant differs from cutting its upper part. Some reports stress pulling it out, others cutting it.
A single method should not be imposed on every use without examining the evidence.
The shared feature is separation from a previous position or attachment.
Land losing vegetation and produce
Ibn Fāris also records tajaffaʾati al-bilādu.
It describes land whose vegetation or produce has gone.
The lexical explanation relates loss of the land’s goodness to its vegetation being consumed or disappearing.
Maqāyīs: vegetation consumed from the land
This involves something leaving its former place, but the word is not itself a scientific or climatic term for drought.
Vegetation may disappear through grazing, water shortage, or another cause. Determining the cause requires evidence from the situation.
“Being depleted of vegetation and produce” is therefore more precise than assigning an invariant cause such as drought.
Exclusion in human relationships
In Asās al-Balāghah, Al-Zamakhsharī records an expression such as nabadhahu jufāʾan.
It concerns excluding someone from companionship or association.
The physical image of casting out is extended to human relations.
As a torrent drives material aside, someone may exclude another person from companionship or a group.
This figurative use does not mean that every separation or broken relationship is expressed with jufāʾ.
Nor does it establish hostility or mistreatment as the root’s primary meaning.
Although this branch involves relationships, its semantic image remains setting aside and driving away.
Al-Zamakhsharī, Asās al-Balāghah: excluding from companionship
5. Poetry and everyday Arabic usage
Tipping a pot for guests
Al-Ṣiḥāḥ transmits the following rajaz:
جَفْؤُكَ ذَا قِدْرِكَ لِلضِّيفَانِ
جَفْأً عَلَى الرُّغْفَانِ فِي الْجِفَانِ
خَيْرٌ مِنَ الْعَكِيسِ بِالْأَلْبَانِ
jafʾuka dhā qidrika li-al-ḍīfāni / jafʾan ʿalā al-rughfāni fī al-jifāni // khayrun mina al-ʿakīsi bi-al-albāni
Translation: “Tipping your pot for guests and pouring its food over loaves in bowls is better than ʿakīs, a mixture of milk with broth or fat.”
Tahdhīb: ʿakīs, milk mixed with broth
Jafʾuka and jafʾan refer to overturning the pot and pouring out its contents.
Rughfān is a plural concerning loaves, while jifān denotes large serving bowls.
The poet depicts hospitality: a pot of food is tipped and its contents poured over bread in serving vessels. Lexical sources describe ʿakīs as milk mixed with broth or fat; bi-al-albān should not simply suggest separate milk served beside an unidentified dish.
Maqāyīs, ʿaks: ʿakīs and fat added to milk
Jafʾ here has a clear practical sense.
The subject is neither flood foam nor worthless matter, but food poured from a vessel.
The witness illustrates the verb’s everyday culinary application.
The examined transmission does not identify the poet or date. It cannot be called certainly pre-Islamic without independent evidence.
Its value lies in preserving a usage cited by lexicographers.
Land depleted of vegetation
Ibn Fāris quotes:
وَلَمَّا رَأَتْ أَنَّ الْبِلَادَ تَجَفَّأَتْ
تَشَكَّتْ إِلَيْنَا عَيْشَهَا أُمُّ حَنْبَلِ
wa-lammā raʾat anna al-bilāda tajaffaʾat / tashakkat ilaynā ʿayshahā Ummu Ḥanbali
Translation: “When Umm Ḥanbal saw that the lands were depleted of vegetation and produce, she complained to us of her difficult livelihood.”
Tajaffaʾat is applied to the land.
Ibn Fāris explains the vegetation being consumed or disappearing.
This connects with pastoral life: declining natural pasture can make human subsistence difficult where livestock depend on it.
Tajaffaʾa does not directly mean human poverty. Its subject is the land; hardship is presented as a consequence.
The examined transmission does not establish the poet or date. This is evidence of recorded Arabic usage, rather than certain pre-Islamic employment.
Maqāyīs: the Umm Ḥanbal witness
Flood foam in a poetic witness
Ibn al-Anbārī’s Al-Zāhir fī Maʿānī Kalimāt al-Nās transmits this verse. The supplied text attributed it to Al-Nābighah al-Shaybānī, but that attribution was not independently confirmed in this review:
غُثَاءُ السَّيْلِ يَضْرَحُ حَجْرَتَيْهِ
تَجَلَّلَهُ مِنَ الزَّبَدِ الْجُفَاءُ
ghuthāʾu al-sayli yaḍraḥu ḥajratayhi / tajallalahu mina al-zabadi al-jufāʾu
Translation: “The torrent’s debris strikes its sides, while cast-off foam envelops it.”
Ibn al-Anbārī, Al-Zāhir: the torrent witness
Three neighboring terms occur together: ghuthāʾ, zabad, and jufāʾ.
Ghuthāʾ concerns debris and light matter carried by water.
Zabad is the foam or frothy matter visible on the water’s surface.
Jufāʾ here highlights foam as driven or cast aside.
The verse is consequently useful for examining distinctions between these terms.
Its tangible scene is a torrent carrying debris and foam and moving them along its course and banks.
Al-Nābighah al-Shaybānī was an Umayyad poet. If the attribution is confirmed, the witness would postdate the Qur’an. Until then, that attribution alone cannot establish this verse’s date or make it certainly pre-Islamic.
Its value is in illustrating the literary use and persistence of the foam-and-debris image.
The historical status of the witnesses
These three witnesses do not have identical historical standing.
The pot rajaz and Umm Ḥanbal verse are transmitted in lexical sources, but the examined evidence does not establish their authorship or precise dates.
The third verse’s attribution to Al-Nābighah al-Shaybānī was not confirmed here; its date is therefore not treated as settled on that basis.
The witnesses do not establish with certainty that all these expressions existed in exactly these forms in pre-Islamic poetry.
The Qur’anic occurrence itself nevertheless shows that jufāʾ was intelligible at revelation. Lexical and poetic reports further clarify its Arabic usage.
6. The Qur’anic occurrence: Al-Raʿd 13:17
أَنزَلَ مِنَ السَّمَاءِ مَاءً فَسَالَتْ أَوْدِيَةٌ بِقَدَرِهَا فَاحْتَمَلَ السَّيْلُ زَبَدًا رَّابِيًا ۚ وَمِمَّا يُوقِدُونَ عَلَيْهِ فِي النَّارِ ابْتِغَاءَ حِلْيَةٍ أَوْ مَتَاعٍ زَبَدٌ مِّثْلُهُ ۚ كَذَٰلِكَ يَضْرِبُ اللَّهُ الْحَقَّ وَالْبَاطِلَ ۚ فَأَمَّا الزَّبَدُ فَيَذْهَبُ جُفَاءً ۖ وَأَمَّا مَا يَنفَعُ النَّاسَ فَيَمْكُثُ فِي الْأَرْضِ ۚ كَذَٰلِكَ يَضْرِبُ اللَّهُ الْأَمْثَالَ
anzala mina al-samāʾi māʾan fa-sālat awdiyatun bi-qadarihā fa-iḥtamala al-saylu zabadan rābiyan wa-mimmā yūqidūna ʿalayhi fī al-nāri ibtighāʾa ḥilyatin aw matāʿin zabadun mithluhu kadhālika yaḍribu Allāhu al-ḥaqqa wa-al-bāṭila fa-ammā al-zabadu fa-yadhhabu jufāʾan wa-ammā mā yanfaʿu al-nāsa fa-yamkuthu fī al-arḍi kadhālika yaḍribu Allāhu al-amthāl
Proposed translation based on this study: “He sent water down from the sky; valleys flowed according to their capacity, and the torrent carried rising foam. What they melt in fire to obtain ornaments or useful articles also produces similar foam. Thus The God illustrates truth and falsehood. The foam passes away, cast aside; what benefits people remains in the earth. Thus The God sets forth examples.”
The verse presents two tangible images: floodwater with foam on its surface, and material heated in fire, producing foam or waste on top.
It then uses them to illuminate truth and falsehood.
The first image: Water and flood foam
The verse begins with water descending from the sky.
Valleys flow according to their capacity, and the torrent carries rising foam.
Rabiyan describes foam rising or standing high on the water’s surface.
Foam can appear more conspicuous than the water beneath it, collecting with other matter and covering the flow.
Yet this foam is not the useful water itself.
Water may enter the ground, collect somewhere, or serve humans, plants, and other living things.
Surface foam and matter may instead be swept aside, driven to the valley’s banks, or disappear after a time.
Jufāʾ here describes the foam’s displacement and removal.
The second image: Foam on molten material
The second part concerns substances heated in fire to make ornaments or useful articles.
Melting certain materials can bring impurities and frothy matter to the surface.
The verse says that these too have foam like flood foam.
Two different processes are compared.
In one, water moves through nature with foam forming upon it.
In the other, humans heat a substance to make ornaments or utensils.
Both reveal a surface material distinct from the more useful substance.
That resemblance is central to the Qur’anic example.
It does not establish that all metals or melting processes produce identical foam. The Qur’an uses a recognizable image, rather than a comprehensive definition of every chemical process.
Fa-ammā al-zabadu fa-yadhhabu jufāʾan
This phrase contains the Qur’an’s occurrence of J F A.
Al-zabad is the foam introduced in the preceding images.
Fa-yadhhabu describes its departure.
Jufāʾan describes how it goes: driven away, discarded, and cast aside.
It does more than state foam’s existence, since al-zabad has already named it.
Translating both words identically would hide the distinction between naming foam and describing its departure.
It is therefore helpful to render al-zabad as foam and explain jufāʾan through expressions such as cast aside or driven away.
This distinction makes the image clearer.
The syntactic role of jufāʾan
Jufāʾan is accusative in this verse.
Al-Zajjāj identifies it as a circumstantial expression, a ḥāl.
It thus describes the foam’s condition as it departs: driven away and cast aside.
Al-Zajjāj in Lisān: accusative circumstantial use
Lexical sources also discuss the form’s construction. Some relate it to a verbal noun of expulsion that acquired nominal use.
The two explanations need not conflict.
A word can historically relate to a verbal noun while functioning circumstantially in a particular sentence.
Translation should preserve the action’s image and the foam’s condition.
“The foam passes away, cast aside,” or “the foam disappears like discarded material” can convey the expression.
Does jufāʾan directly mean falsehood?
Some dictionaries and exegetical explanations gloss jufāʾ as falsehood or something vain.
The context makes this intelligible: the Qur’an names truth and falsehood and sets departing foam against what is useful and enduring.
Nevertheless, the direct meaning and the parable’s implication should remain distinct.
In its physical sense, jufāʾ concerns something driven or cast aside.
Falsehood is the concept compared with departing foam in the parable.
Rendering jufāʾan simply as falsehood would therefore lose part of the tangible image.
The reader would no longer clearly see how foam leaves the flow.
Preserve the physical sense in translation and explain its relation to falsehood in commentary.
Wa-ammā mā yanfaʿu al-nāsa fa-yamkuthu fī al-arḍ
After the foam, the Qur’an describes what benefits people and remains in the earth.
This introduces the parable’s other side.
In the flood image, water can sustain life and cultivation.
In the melting image, material prepared for ornaments or utensils becomes usable after waste is separated.
The Qur’an thus distinguishes what departs from what is useful and remains.
Yamkuthu belongs to another root and concerns staying or remaining.
Beside yadhhabu, it creates the contrast between departure and remaining.
Jufāʾ concerns discarded material’s condition; usefulness comes from yanfaʿu al-nās, and remaining from yamkuthu.
Al-Ṭabarī: useful water and metal versus departing foam
These meanings should not all be merged into the definition of J F A itself.
7. Truth and falsehood in the foam image
Conspicuous appearance and real value
Flood foam can look voluminous and prominent, sometimes covering water and attracting more attention than the water itself.
Its prominence does not establish greater usefulness or durability.
The chief benefit may lie in the water flowing beneath it.
The image illustrates an important difference between truth and falsehood: something can be conspicuous and substantial-looking without that appearance proving its worth or stability.
It does not follow that every loud, popular, or widespread thing must be false.
The image uses foam’s combined characteristics; its apparent volume alone is not a verdict on every phenomenon.
Does everything useful always endure?
The parable sets usefulness and remaining against departing foam.
This should not become an exceptionless empirical law that every useful physical object lasts forever.
Water can evaporate, metal deteriorate, and useful utensils perish.
Remaining is presented relative to foam and discarded matter.
The parable distinguishes real benefit from material removed in the process.
Fa-yamkuthu fī al-arḍ should be understood within that image and its relation to truth and falsehood, rather than as physical immortality for all useful objects.
Does falsehood always disappear immediately?
In society, a false claim may remain accepted for a long time, acquire power, or cause extensive harm.
Al-Raʿd 13:17 should therefore not become a promise that every false thing vanishes immediately at a specified time.
The verse itself specifies no time for the foam’s removal.
Its appearance and movement cannot calculate the duration of every social system or mistaken belief.
The parable depicts truth and falsehood in terms of reality, benefit, and outcome; it supplies no timetable for every historical event.
This prevents jufāʾ from becoming a definite prediction of when people, governments, or ideas will fall.
Truth, benefit, and remaining
Al-ḥaqq wa-al-bāṭil explicitly names truth and falsehood.
The following image shows foam departing and what benefits people remaining.
The Qur’an thus explains truth and falsehood through appearance, remaining, and usefulness.
Truth should nevertheless not be reduced to whatever materially benefits humans.
Ḥaqq has a wider Qur’anic field involving reality, correctness, established right, and justice.
Usefulness is one aspect of this image, rather than a complete definition of every use of ḥaqq.
Nor is falsehood lexically identical to flood foam.
Foam is its tangible example, used to illuminate one characteristic.
Preserve the figurative relationship without identifying the two sides of the comparison.
9. Questions of understanding and translation
Does jufāʾ always mean worthless?
Some sources gloss it as something vain or useless.
The image behind that application needs examination.
In the Qur’anic parable, foam and debris swept aside stand opposite useful water or material.
Worthlessness and lack of benefit therefore enter the explanation of the parable.
That assessment should not displace the physical sense and removal image.
Jufāʾ can lexically mean discarded foam without an intended moral judgment.
Is everything discarded false?
No.
Something may be set aside because circumstances change, a need ends, or a person makes a choice.
Discarding alone does not establish factual or moral falsehood.
Al-Raʿd 13:17 uses a particular image to explain truth and falsehood.
Not every act of discarding or departure carries that same moral assessment.
Does jufāʾ mean absolute annihilation?
In a torrent, jufāʾ expresses matter being driven or cast aside.
That matter may continue to exist physically afterward.
Foam or debris may reach a bank, collect on the ground, or dry later.
Jufāʾ therefore need not mean matter becoming absolute nonexistence.
Fa-yadhhabu expresses departure; the image’s relationship to falsehood’s disappearance or loss of validity belongs to the parable.
The word does not establish that everything false is removed instantly from the world without residual effects.
Does jufāʾ concern only water foam?
Arabic also records its application to a pot’s froth.
Verbs in the family can concern throwing a person, overturning a vessel, and uprooting vegetation.
The lexical family is therefore broader than one example.
In the Qur’anic use, however, jufāʾ occurs in a sentence about foam; that tangible image is the starting point.
Is harsh jafāʾ identical to Qur’anic jufāʾ?
The words look similar, and some lexical reports discuss a relationship between their families.
Jafāʾ meaning harshness or unkindness concerns behavior and human relationships.
Jufāʾ in Al-Raʿd 13:17 concerns discarded foam.
The verse cannot consequently be translated as “the foam goes violently” or “the foam behaves unkindly.”
Such readings arise from surface resemblance and do not fit the sentence.
10. Translation proposals for Forqan
The principal rendering of the sole Qur’anic jufāʾan should preserve both its relation to foam and its removal.
The expression in Al-Raʿd 13:17:
“Fa-ammā al-zabadu fa-yadhhabu jufāʾan”
can be translated:
“The foam, however, passes away, cast aside.”
“The foam disappears like discarded material” can also clarify the sentence, although its Persian equivalent is longer.
Avoid substituting falsehood directly for jufāʾan: the verse has already named truth and falsehood and then explains through foam’s image.
Although uselessness is defensible in analyzing the parable, “useless” is not a full primary equivalent of the physical meaning.
Non-Qur’anic forms require different equivalents according to their construction and object.
Jafaʾa al-wādī ghuthāʾahu means “the torrent swept its debris aside.”
Jafaʾati al-qidru bi-zabadihā can be rendered “the pot threw out its froth.”
With a person as agent, jafaʾa al-qidra means “he overturned the pot and poured out its contents.”
Jafaʾa al-rajula is recorded for “he threw the man to the ground.”
Ijtafaʾa al-baqla concerns uprooting and discarding vegetation.
Tajaffaʾati al-bilādu describes land depleted of vegetation or produce.
Preserve each application’s meaning rather than reducing all to “became foam,” “became false,” or “went away.”
11. Conclusion
Arabic J F A concerns driving away, casting out, pushing aside, and separation from a former position.
In the familiar torrent application, jafaʾa concerns expelling foam and debris, and jufāʾ names foam or matter cast aside.
Everyday uses also include a pot throwing out froth, overturning a vessel, throwing someone to the ground, and uprooting vegetation.
Lexical and poetic witnesses show this image in several settings. Their precise dates are not always known; evidence recorded in later sources cannot all be assigned to the pre-Islamic period without examination.
The Qur’an uses the root only once, as jufāʾan in Al-Raʿd 13:17.
Two tangible scenes appear: rising flood foam and surface froth or matter produced when substances are heated to make ornaments or utensils.
Both reveal surface material distinct from the useful substance.
The Qur’an then describes foam passing away as discarded matter while what benefits people remains in the earth.
The parable illuminates truth and falsehood.
The lexical meaning of jufāʾ should nevertheless not be reduced to falsehood. Falsehood is the parable’s subject; discarded foam is its tangible image.
Nor should resemblance between jufāʾ and jafāʾ meaning unkindness confuse J F A with J F W. Lexicographers propose historical relationships, but the Qur’anic forms require separate examination.
For Forqan, “passes away, cast aside” in Al-Raʿd 13:17 better preserves the image and primary sense than directly substituting falsehood.
The defensible semantic core is expulsion and being cast aside. In the Qur’anic use, this movement concerns foam contrasted with what is useful and remains.
The parable’s message arises from the relation between departing foam and useful substance, rather than turning jufāʾ itself into an independent moral or philosophical term.