▪ Jeffery1938: »It is used only in late passages in the technical sense of giving aid in religious matters. / Obviously it is not used in the normal sense of ‘to correct’ or ‘punish’, nor can it be a normal development of
ʕazara ‘to reprove, blame’. The Lexicons are forced to illustrate this Qurʔānic use of the word from the Ḥadīth whose usage is obviously dependent on the Qurʔān itself (
LA, vi, 237). / It thus seems probable that the verb is denominative, formed from a borrowed [Hbr]
ʕēzär or
ʕäzrâʰ meaning ‘help’, ‘succour’, which would have come to Muḥammad from his contact with the Jewish communities.
1
. As the Hbr and Phoen
ʕzr, Aram
ʕdr, Syr
ʕdr are cognate with the Arab
ʕaḏara ‘to aid’, it is possible to consider
ʕazara as a by-form of
ʕaḏara, just as [Palm]
ʕdr occurs, though infrequently, beside
ʕzr in the Palm inscriptions,
2
but the fact that it is
ʕazzara and not
ʕazara which means ‘to help’ is against this, and in favour of its being a denominative.«