Read · 8 min · Optional
What the classical commentators say about these seven ayat. Take this one if you want to go deeper.
The passage turns from the Hereafter to the Lord who created, then back to the resurrection. The units follow Ibn Kathir’s four comments.
Ayat 52–53 — The Book, and the Day it comes true
Allah brought them a Book, explained with knowledge, as guidance and mercy. They wait only for its outcome. On that Day they admit the messengers spoke the truth, and ask for intercessors, or to be sent back.
Source summary: Ibn Kathir says that by sending prophets and a Book “explained in detail”, Allah left the idolaters no excuse, and he compares 17:15.
Source summary: On ayah 53, the commentators read taʾwīl as the outcome of what the Book promised, not as an interpretation of it. Ibn Kathir calls it “the final fulfillment”, and reports from Ibn ʿAbbas that its Day is the Day of Resurrection. Al-Jalalayn: “its fulfilment the consequences of what is in it”.
Paraphrase from the Arabic: Al-Tabari says they ask for intercessors because in this world they were used to having someone to speak for them in their needs. They remember it at a time when there is no friendship and no intercession.
Optional source note — what taʾwīl means here, and the plea to go back
Paraphrase from the Arabic: Al-Tabari reports several early readings of taʾwīl here: its reward (Qatada), its outcome (Qatada), its recompense (Mujahid), and from al-Rabiʿ ibn Anas: it keeps arriving, one matter after another, until it is complete on the Day of Resurrection. Ibn Zayd reads it as the Book’s reality, as in 12:100, where Yusuf says of his dream: “My Lord has made it reality.” Al-Qurtubi takes the word from āla, to return to or end in, and says the readings of Mujahid and Qatada are close.
Paraphrase from the Arabic: Al-Tabari also says ayah 52 turns back to the opening of the surah, 7:2. Al-Qurtubi calls the question about intercessors a wish, and says of “they will have lost themselves”: whoever does not benefit from himself has lost himself. For the plea to be sent back, Ibn Kathir compares 6:27–28.
Facilitator guidance
For the facilitator: Keep taʾwīl as the four read it here, the outcome coming true. The Arabic words page has a card on it.
Reflection: The Book came while there was still time to act on it. The plea to be sent back is a wish for that same time.
Ayah 54 — The Lord who created and commands
Your Lord is Allah, who created the heavens and the earth in six days, then rose over the Throne. He covers the night with the day, and the sun, the moon and the stars are under His command. His is the creation and the command.
Source summary: Ibn Kathir names the six days, Sunday to Friday, and reports a difference of opinion: whether they were like “our standard days”, or each day like a thousand years, as reported from Mujahid, Imam Ahmad, and Ibn ʿAbbas through al-Dahhak. Al-Jalalayn says the days were “of the days of this world that is to say in the equivalent thereof since there was no sun then”.
Source summary: Why six days, and not at once? Al-Jalalayn: “Had He willed He could have created them in an instant”, but “He wanted to teach His creatures to be circumspect”. Al-Qurtubi gives the same reason in his own words, to teach gentleness and care in our affairs, and adds that everything has its appointed time with Allah, which is also why He does not hurry to punish. He compares 50:38–39.
Optional source note — rising over the Throne: what the commentators say
Paraphrase from the Arabic: The commentators affirm it as the ayah says, without asking how. Al-Qurtubi records Imam Malik’s answer: the istiwāʾ is known, and the how is unknown. He says the first generations affirmed it as the Book says, and did not claim to know how. Ibn Kathir names the way of the early imams, among them Malik, al-Awzaʿi, al-Thawri, al-Layth ibn Saʿd, al-Shafiʿi and Ahmad: to let such ayat pass as they came, without asking how, without likening Allah to His creation, and without denying what He said of Himself. He cites 42:11: “There is nothing like unto Him, and He is the Hearing, the Seeing.”
Source summary: Al-Jalalayn: “a presiding befitting of Him”.
Paraphrase from the Arabic: Al-Qurtubi also records that many later theologians explained it as the height of Allah’s majesty and dominion, to keep Him free of place and direction. Ibn Kathir says this is not the place to set out all the positions, and al-Qurtubi says that what he has given is enough.
Optional source note — the night and the day, the sun, the moon and the stars
Source summary: On the night and the day, Ibn Kathir says: “Each of them seeks the other rapidly, and does not come late.” On “His is the creation and the command”, he says: the dominion and the decision.
Paraphrase from the Arabic: The sun, the moon and the stars can be read as things He created, joined to “the heavens”, or as a new sentence: they are made subservient. Al-Jalalayn and al-Qurtubi give both, and Ibn Kathir says the two are close in meaning. Saheeh International’s “[He created]” follows the first.
Paraphrase from the Arabic: Al-Tabari reports Mujahid: creation began on Sunday and was gathered on Friday, and one of the six days is like a thousand years of what we count. Al-Qurtubi takes tabāraka, blessed, from baraka: abundance and expansion.
Facilitator guidance
For the facilitator: The discussion asks about the six days, not about istiwāʾ. If a guest asks how Allah rose over the Throne, the notes page has an answer in the commentators’ words. Ibn Kathir is read here in his Arabic; the abridged English renders this sentence loosely. A report naming what was created on each day of the week is not on these pages, and the notes page says why.
Reflection: The ayah about the heavens and the earth leads straight into an ayah about our du'a. The Lord who holds the sun and the moon is the One we are told to call on.
Ayat 55–56 — How to call on Him
Call on your Lord humbly and privately; He does not like those who overstep. Do not spoil the earth after it has been set right. Call on Him in fear and in hope: His mercy is near to those who do good.
Source summary: Ibn Kathir explains taḍarruʿan wa khufyatan as “in humbleness and humility”, and brings the narration from the Two Sahihs in which the Prophet ﷺ told people who raised their voices that they were not calling one who is deaf or absent (core on the hadith page).
Paraphrase from the Arabic: Al-Tabari says: call on Him alone, sincerely, humbly, and privately, between you and Him, not loudly to be seen. He records al-Hasan al-Basri: the Muslims used to strive in du'a and no voice was heard from them, only a whisper between them and their Lord.
Source summary: All four read “transgressors” here as those who overstep in du'a. Al-Jalalayn: “braggarts and loud-mouthed in their supplications”. Ibn Kathir reports Abu Mijlaz: “asking to reach the grade of the Prophets”, and the narration of ʿAbdullah ibn Mughaffal (optional on the hadith page).
Source summary: On ayah 56, Ibn Kathir explains fear and hope as “fearing what He has of severe torment and hoping in what He has of tremendous reward”. Al-Qurtubi says hope and fear should be like the two wings of a bird, carrying a person on his way; with one alone, he falls.
Optional source note — corruption, and “near”
Paraphrase from the Arabic: Al-Tabari and al-Jalalayn read the corruption as associating partners with Allah and disobeying Him, after He set the earth right by sending messengers. Al-Qurtubi says the ban is general, on all corruption, little or much, and reports al-Dahhak’s examples: stopping flowing water, or cutting down fruit trees to cause harm.
Paraphrase from the Arabic: Al-Tabari says the reward promised to those who do good is near to them, because nothing stands between them and it except their souls leaving their bodies. Why qarīb, near, is masculine here is a point of grammar the commentators discuss; the Arabic words page has it.
Source summary: For a quiet du'a, Ibn Kathir compares 7:205, and al-Tabari and al-Qurtubi bring Zakariyya’s du'a in 19:3: “When he called to his Lord a private supplication.”
Facilitator guidance
For the facilitator: Al-Qurtubi also discusses raising the hands in du'a, where scholars differed, and lists ways of overstepping in du'a. Both are on the notes page as background, not as rulings.
Reflection: A quiet du'a does not need an audience. It is said to One who is near and hears it.
Ayat 57–58 — Rain on a dead land, and two kinds of ground
Allah sends the winds as good tidings before His mercy, drives heavy clouds to a dead land and brings out every kind of fruit: so He will bring out the dead. Good land gives its plants by His permission; bad land gives only a little, with difficulty.
Source summary: Ibn Kathir says “before His mercy” means before the rain, and reads the end of ayah 57 as the resurrection: “just as We bring life to dead land, We shall raise up the dead on the Day of Resurrection”.
Paraphrase from the Arabic: Al-Tabari says the mercy here is the rain, and that the parable is for those who denied the resurrection: for One who has this power, raising the dead is easy.
Source summary: On ayah 58, al-Jalalayn says the good land is “a similitude of the believer who when he hears an admonition he heeds it and benefits from it”, and the bad land a similitude of the disbeliever. Ibn Kathir brings the Prophet’s ﷺ parable of rain on three kinds of ground, the second core reading on the hadith page.
Paraphrase from the Arabic: Al-Tabari reports the believer and the disbeliever from Ibn ʿAbbas and Qatada, and from al-Suddi a reading about hearts: when the Qur'an came down, the believing heart took it in and faith settled there, and the other heart kept nothing from it that would help it. Al-Qurtubi reports the same kind of reading from al-Hasan: a parable for hearts.
Optional source note — how the word for the winds is read
Paraphrase from the Arabic: The Arabic on this site reads bushran, “as good tidings”. Al-Qurtubi names it as the reading of ʿAsim and gives 30:46 as its witness. Al-Jalalayn’s text reads nushuran, “unfolding”, and he gives bushran as a third variant. Al-Tabari’s text reads nashran, gently blowing winds that raise the clouds, and he calls nashran and nushuran two well-known readings. Al-Qurtubi lists seven. When al-Jalalayn or al-Tabari explain this word, they are explaining their own reading.
Paraphrase from the Arabic: On ayah 58, al-Tabari also reports Mujahid: a parable for Adam and all his children, some of whom believed and became good, and some of whom did not. Al-Qurtubi reports al-Nahhas: the quick to understand are like the good land, and the slow like the bad.
Facilitator guidance
For the facilitator: Keep the wind and the rain with the text, not with any storm, flood or drought in the news. Some commentators add details about rain before the resurrection; those are not on these pages, and the notes page says why.
Reflection: The same rain falls on both kinds of ground. What comes up depends on the ground, and the ayah ends with people who are grateful.
Sources and further reading
- Tafsir Ibn Kathir (English, abridged) — Four entries, which give this page its units. On istiwāʾ at 7:54 the full Arabic text was read as well. on 7:52–53 ↗ · on 7:54 ↗ · on 7:55–56 ↗ · on 7:57–58 ↗ · Arabic, on 7:54 ↗
- Tafsir al-Jalalayn (English, trans. Feras Hamza) — Word-level glosses on every ayah. on 7:53 ↗ · on 7:54 ↗ · on 7:55 ↗ · on 7:57 ↗ · on 7:58 ↗
- Tafsir al-Tabari (Arabic) — Read for every ayah. on 7:53 ↗ · on 7:55 ↗ · on 7:56 ↗ · on 7:57 ↗ · on 7:58 ↗
- Tafsir al-Qurtubi (Arabic) — Read for every ayah, and on 7:54 for istiwāʾ. on 7:53 ↗ · on 7:54 ↗ · on 7:56 ↗ · on 7:57 ↗ · on 7:58 ↗
- Quranic Arabic Corpus — Roots and counts on the Arabic words page. 7:55 word by word ↗
Lectures on this passage
-
Yasir Qadhi
How Loud Your DUA Should Be? | Ep #13 | Etiquettes of DUA
10:45 · EPIC MASJID (official channel)
Connection to the verses · editorial reflection: From the transcript, a short talk on ayah 55: how loud our du'a should be. He reads the ayah at the start, and from 5:29 brings the narration of the Companions who raised their voices, the first core reading on the hadith page. He says a soft voice is the default, and du'a out loud in a group is the exception.