Ar Raqeeb

Raqaba is a neck, and to raqaba someone is to keep your eye on them — a watchman’s word. The same letters name the neck that is freed in the Qur’an’s expiations, taḥrīru raqaba, where a whole person is called by the part a rope would go round.

The one ayah carrying this form has Isa — Jesus — say it of God: he was a witness over his people while he was among them, and when he was taken, You were ar-Raqīb over them. The watching here is the kind that keeps, not the kind that catches out. Somebody was looking after them when he no longer could.