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Nadeem Bhatti Posted 12 years ago
Grammar

prepositions

"Do you order righteousness of the people and forget yourselves while you recite the Scripture? Then will you not reason?"
or
"Do you order righteousness to the people and forget yourselves while you recite the Scripture? Then will you not reason?"
  

Top answer

Hello Nadeem; Welcome to English Forums. Perhaps you mean one of these: "Do you ask for righteousness for the people and forget yourselves while you recite the Scripture? " "Do you pray for righteousness for the people and forget yourselves while you recite the Scripture?

— AlpheccaStars

  • Hello Nadeem; Welcome to English Forums.
  • Perhaps you mean one of these: "Do you ask for righteousness for the people and forget yourselves while you recite the Scripture?
  • " "Do you pray for righteousness for the people and forget yourselves while you recite the Scripture?
  • " "Do you demand that people act righteously and forget yourselves while you recite the Scripture?
  • "
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13 Answers
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Hello Nadeem;

Welcome to English Forums.

Perhaps you mean one of these:

"Do you ask for righteousness for the people and forget yourselves while you recite the Scripture? Then will you not reason?"

"Do you pray for righteousness for the people and forget yourselves while you recite the Scripture? Then will you not reason?"

"Do you demand that people act
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preposition “to” or “of”? only one answer, sir.
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"Do you order righteousness of the people and forget yourselves while you recite the Scripture? Then will you not reason?"

The standard quotation from the Koran uses 'of'.

Clive
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Both are correct but sense of sentence will be changed accordingly. And the correct sense ought to be as in the standard version.

Did I perceive your answer rightly, sir Clive?
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Neither sentence is worded in standard modern English. We don't 'order something to someone', nor do we 'order something of someone'.
Texts like the Bible and the Koran commonly are written in archaic English.
A modern version would be eg Do you order people to be righteous . . . . ?
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Nadeem Bhattipreposition “to” or “of”? only one answer, sir.
It would help us a lot, Nadeem, if you told us that you were quoting from sacred texts. Then we would treat it with complete respect. These sacred texts are quite old and our modern language has changed since they were written.
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Yes Sir, the original sacred text in Arabic is old but its translation in English I've quoted is not old.

I wonder if 'righteousness of the people' may be treated as a phrase then it'd make sense.
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Nadeem BhattiI wonder if 'righteousness of people' may be treated a phrase then it makes sense.
"righteousness of people" is not a set phrase; the preposition 'of' goes with the verb ('order') in this case. As in, for example, demand something of someone.
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demand 'bonus of sales'

Avoid 'wastage of food'

stop 'discrimination of the poor'

sir, more examples.
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But some translations are awkward or archaic and it makes the verses difficult for contemporary speakers.

This site gives seven different translations of the same verse, 44th verse of chapter 2 (surat l-baqarah:
http://corpus.quran.com/translation.jsp?chapter=2&verse=44

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