Tafsir

Paraphrase from the Arabic: Al-Tabari ties the lie back to ayah 28: people who did something shameful and said “Allah commanded us to it.” Denying His signs means denying His proofs of His oneness and of His prophets. “Their portion of the Book” is their share of what Allah wrote for them in the Preserved Tablet, and he records six views of what that share is: the punishment prepared for disbelief; the misery or happiness written beforehand; their own record of deeds, good repaid with good and evil with evil; what they were promised in the Book, good or evil; that their faces would be blackened; and their provision, lifespan and deeds. He prefers the view that it is what was written for them in this world — good and evil, provision, deeds and term — and he gives his reason: the ayah says it lasts “until Our messengers come to take them in death,” and no angel of death comes in the Hereafter, where the punishment has no end.

Paraphrase from the Arabic: “Our messengers” are the angel of death and his helpers, and they take them in full, every one of them, from this world to the next. The angels ask where the ones they took as protectors are, and why they do not rescue them now. Ḍallū ʿannā, “they have departed from us,” means they went another way and left us when we needed them.

Paraphrase from the Arabic: Al-Qurtubi lists the same views of the portion — provision, lifespan and deeds (Ibn Zayd); misery and happiness (Saʿid ibn Jubayr); good and evil (Ibn ʿAbbas); punishment in proportion to their disbelief (al-Hasan and Abu Salih) — and reports al-Tabari’s preference with its reason. He adds two more readings of “the Book”: the Qur'an, because it mentions their punishment, or the Preserved Tablet. The angels’ question is a question of rebuke; “those you used to invoke” means those you used to worship; and ḍallū means they came to nothing and went.

Reading note: This one is our observation, not the commentators’. Surah Ghafir 40:73–74 has the same scene and the same answer. There too they are asked where their partners are, and six Arabic words in a row are the same as these words of ayah 37: “besides Allah?” They will say, “They have departed from us.”

Paraphrase from the Arabic: Al-Tabari says “its sister” means its sister in religion and creed; the word is feminine because a nation, umma, is meant. “The last” are those who came later and took the earlier ones as their leaders in going astray, and they ask: these misled us from Your way, so give them double our punishment. Ḍiʿf of a thing, he says, is the same again. Allah answers that the punishment is repeated for all of them, first and last, followers and followed. “But you do not know” means you do not know the measure of what Allah has prepared for you, which is why one nation asks for double for the other.

Paraphrase from the Arabic: On ayah 39 he says the first nations answer: you have no advantage over us. You knew what Allah’s punishment did to us, and the messengers came to you as they came to us. Did you turn back? So the followers have no argument left. He reports the same from Abu Mijlaz and al-Suddi. Mujahid read “no advantage” as “no lightening of the punishment”; al-Tabari rejects this, because the past tense in the ayah shows the reproach is about what they did before, not about their request for double.

Paraphrase from the Arabic: Al-Qurtubi says “the last” are the followers and “the first” are the leaders. They speak to their Lord about the leaders, not to them. Ḍiʿf is the like of a thing, added once or more, and he compares 33:68. On “they do not know,” read with yā: no group knows what the other suffers — if someone in the Fire knew that another’s punishment was heavier than his, that would be a kind of comfort. Read with tāʾ, it means you who are addressed, or you people of this world, do not know the measure of their punishment.

Paraphrase from the Arabic: On ayah 39 he gives one line: you disbelieved and did what we did, so you do not deserve any lightening of the punishment. He does not name Mujahid, but this is close to Mujahid’s reading, the one al-Tabari rejects. The two commentators differ here; both readings are given so the room can see it.

Paraphrase from the Arabic: Al-Tabari says those who deny do not affirm Allah’s proofs or follow His messengers, and they are too proud to do so. He gives three views of the gates: closed to their souls when they leave their bodies (Ibn ʿAbbas through al-Dahhak, and al-Suddi); closed to their deeds and their supplication (Ibn ʿAbbas through other chains, Mujahid, Ibrahim al-Nakhaʿi, Saʿid ibn Jubayr); and closed to both (Ibn Jurayj). He chooses both, because Allah’s statement is general and makes no exception. In his own explanation, nothing they say or do in their lives rises to Allah, because only the good word and the righteous deed rise (35:10). He supports this with the narrations of al-Baraʾ ibn ʿAzib and Abu Hurayrah about the soul at death; the second is an optional narration on the hadith page. He notes two well-known readings, lā yuftaḥu and lā tufattaḥu: the gates are not opened all at once, and not one after another.

Paraphrase from the Arabic: “Until a camel enters the eye of a needle” means they will never enter, as a camel never passes through the eye of a needle. Samm is any narrow opening, and khiyāṭ is the needle. Most of the early commentators he reports took al-jamal as the camel: Ibn Masʿud, al-Hasan, Abu al-ʿAliyah, al-Dahhak, and Ibn ʿAbbas in some reports, who called it “the great camel,” too large for the needle’s hole. Other reports from Ibn ʿAbbas, and from Saʿid ibn Jubayr, ʿIkrimah and Mujahid, read al-jummal, a thick rope such as a ship’s cable. Lane’s lexicon adds that ʿAli and many others read it that way too. Al-Tabari’s ruling is that the correct reading is the one all the regional readers agree on, al-jamal, the camel, and that it is not permitted to depart from it. So the recited text says camel; the rope is a reported reading.

Paraphrase from the Arabic: Al-Qurtubi gives three readings of the gates: not opened for their souls, which he supports with reports he collected, including al-Baraʾ ibn ʿAzib’s; not opened for their supplication (Mujahid, al-Nakhaʿi); or the gates of Paradise, because Paradise is in heaven. He records which readers read yuftaḥu and which tufattaḥu, and prefers the doubled form because it points to many gates. On the camel he gives Ibn Masʿud’s answer when he was asked, “the she-camel’s mate,” given as if the question were about something everyone knows; and the reading al-jummal from Ibn ʿAbbas, explained as a ship’s cable, which Thaʿlab describes as ropes gathered together. Samm al-khiyāṭ is the eye of the needle.

Paraphrase from the Arabic: Al-Tabari says Allah does not charge a soul with deeds beyond what it can bear, so that it is not put in hardship. His word for hardship comes from the same root as ḥaraj, the word of 7:2 that session 01 looked at. The resentment removed is the rancour, grudges and enmity some of them had for others in this world, so that in Paradise none of them envies what Allah gave another. “Who guided us to this” means He gave us success in the deeds that earned this honour, and “we would never have been guided” means we would not have found the way without His favour. “The messengers of our Lord came with the truth” means the truth of His promise to the obedient and His threat to the disobedient.

Paraphrase from the Arabic: On “you have been made to inherit it,” al-Tabari says Allah gave them, as an inheritance, the places that would have belonged to those who denied His messengers, because they believed the messengers and obeyed their Lord. That, he says, is “for what you used to do.” He reports from al-Suddi that every person has a home in Paradise and a home in the Fire.

Paraphrase from the Arabic: Al-Qurtubi also calls the clause about capacity a parenthesis between the subject and what is said about it. Nazʿ is drawing something out, and ghill is the rancour hidden in the breast. He gives other readings too: that it means no envy over the different ranks in Paradise, or that it is removed by the pure drink of Paradise (76:21). “Who guided us to this” means to this reward, by guiding us and creating guidance for us.

Reading note: This one is our observation, not the commentators’. The clause in ayah 42 comes back in the Qur'an almost word for word: the same five Arabic words are in 6:152, and 23:62 and 2:286 say it too. The noun wusʿ, capacity, occurs five times in the Qur'an, and every time it is in this promise. And ayah 43 opens with the same six words as 15:47, “And We will remove whatever is in their breasts of resentment.”