Verses 1–14
بِسۡمِ ٱللَّهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ
In the name of Allah, the most Merciful, the most Compassionate
This sūrah is focused on expounding the origin and the return (al-mabdaʾ wa al-maʿād) and establishing proofs for both. It also seeks to expel anxiety about this from people’s hearts by referring to prophethood and the Book, and explaining what distinguishes those who believe in God’s signs from the sinners who have forsaken the garment of servanthood. God promises unimaginable rewards to the first group and warns the later of a severe and everlasting retribution. He says they will taste the nearer punishment before the greater one. The sūrah concludes by emphasising this warning and bidding the Prophet to wait as the sinful are waiting.
The sūrah is entirely Meccan in provenance, save for verses 18 to 20, which some say are Medinan.
The section we are presently to discuss deals with the first of the two main topics outlined above.
Commentary
الم ١ تَنْزِيلُ الْكِتَابِ لَا رَيْبَ فِيهِ مِنْ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ ٢
(32:1-2) Alif, Lām, Mīm. The sending down of the Book, there is no doubt in it, from the Lord of all the worlds.
Meaning: “This is the sending down of the Book.” “Sending down” (tanzīl) is a verbal noun (maṣdar) which carries the meaning of the passive participle (ism mafʿūl) and its attachment to “the Book” in a possessive construct (iḍāfah) yields an adjectival meaning. In other words: “This is the Book sent down, there is no doubt in it….”
From the Lord of all the worlds: This is a skilful introduction, in line with the overall goals of the sūrah, in that it expresses both the doctrines of monotheism and resurrection that the idolaters reject, as we have seen already that they do not believe there is any Lord for all the worlds, rather that each world has its own deity and that God is the deity of these deities.
أَمْ يَقُولُونَ افْتَرَاهُ ۚ بَلْ هُوَ الْحَقُّ مِنْ رَبِّكَ لِتُنْذِرَ قَوْمًا مَا أَتَاهُمْ مِنْ نَذِيرٍ مِنْ قَبْلِكَ لَعَلَّهُمْ يَهْتَدُونَ ٣
(32:3) Or do they say: He has fabricated it? Rather it is the truth from your Lord, that you may warn a people to whom there did not come any warner before you, so that they may be guided.
“Or (am)” here is disjunctive. The verse means: “Rather they say He has fabricated the Qur’an and falsely attributed it to God.” God answers this, saying: Rather it is the truth from your Lord, that you may warn….
That you may warn a people to whom there did not come any warner before you: Some commentators say that this refers to the Quraysh, as no prophet had come to them before him unlike other Arab tribes who had received prophets such as Khālid ibn Sinān al-ʿAbasī and Ḥanẓalah, according to some narrations.
Other commentators say that this refers to the gap between the times of Jesus and Muḥammad, who lived as if they were unaware of their duties towards God and the purpose of worship, for which He had created them. However, the meaning of this gap is that there were no prophets sent with a new code or scripture, not that there were absolutely no prophets at all for almost six centuries—this is something we cannot accept!
So that they may be guided: This is the desired outcome (ghāyah rajāʾiyyah) of sending the Messenger. As we have mentioned when commenting on similar verses, this hope (tarajjī) either inheres in the situation or in those being addressed, not the speaker (God).
اللَّهُ الَّذِي خَلَقَ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضَ وَمَا بَيْنَهُمَا فِي سِتَّةِ أَيَّامٍ ثُمَّ اسْتَوَىٰ عَلَى الْعَرْشِ ۖ مَا لَكُمْ مِنْ دُونِهِ مِنْ وَلِيٍّ وَلَا شَفِيعٍ ۚ أَفَلَا تَتَذَكَّرُونَ ٤
(32:4) It is Allah who created the heavens and the earth and whatever is between them in six days; then He settled on the Throne. You do not have besides Him any guardian or intercessor. Will you not then take admonition?
We have already discussed similar verses, such as He, who created the heavens and the earth and whatever is between them in six days, and then settled on the Throne (). It has also already been explained that “settling upon the Throne” (istawāʾ ʿalā al-ʿarsh) is a visual allusion to the position of directing existent things through a general, all-encompassing natural order that rules overall. This is why we see that the Divine Throne usually appears in contexts related to governance of the cosmos, such as:
…then settled on the Throne. He draws the night’s cover over the day… ()
…and then settled on the Throne, directing the command … ()
…then settled on the Throne. He knows whatever enters the earth and whatever emerges from it… ()
…Lord of the Throne, the All-glorious, doer of what He desires… ().
The reason why God mentions settling on the Throne after the creation of the heavens and the earth is because the target of the discussion is God’s exclusive lordship and divinity. But merely ascribing the creative act to Him does nothing to refute the beliefs of the idolaters; they do not deny that He is the sole creator, they merely say that the governance of the cosmos (which is lordship) belongs to their deities. In doing so, they reserve divinity (ulūhiyyah—meaning to make something an object of worship, or maʿbūdiyyah) to their own deities and say that God is the lord of lords and the head of the gods.
Therefore, to provide an argument to refute their belief, God mentions creation and then governance together, because each one of these entails the other and the two cannot be separated; the originator of things and their creator must also be their lord and the one who directs their affairs. In other words, He alone will be a lord and He alone will be a god, just as He alone is a creator.
This is the reason why God mentions creation and governance together in the verse were are discussing: It is Allah who created the heavens and the earth and whatever is between them in six days; then He settled on the Throne. You do not have besides Him any guardian or intercessor. And guardianship and intercession, like settling upon the Throne, are both matters of governance rather than creation.
You do not have besides Him any guardian or intercessor—a guardian (walī) is the one who directs a thing’s affairs, and it is obvious that the affairs upon which our lives depend rest on a universal order that governs all things and the specific order that pertains to us. This order, whatever it is, is a necessary corollary of the qualities of the creation of things. The creative act, however it came about, originated with God. Therefore it is God who is our guardian who looks after the our affairs, just as He alone is the guardian of all things without partner.
An intercessor (shafīʿ), based on what we have already said in our discussion of shafāʿah in the first volume of this work, is something that attaches to a deficient cause (sabab nāqiṣ) and, in doing so, renders it complete and effective. Intercession means to render a deficient cause sufficient, so that it has its effect. If we apply this to the chains of cause and effect in the cosmos, we see that these causes are composed of many different elements, and these elements intercede for one another in order to bring about their effect. For example, by this understanding, the clouds, rain, sun, and shade are all intercessors for plants.
Now, if the origin of these causes, their elements, and the connections between them is God, then He is the true intercessor who completes their deficiencies, and there is no genuine intercessor besides Him.
To put it in more precise terms, we have already seen in our discussion of the Beautiful Names in the eighth volume that God’s Beautiful Names are intermediaries between Him and His creation in carrying the divine effusion (fayḍ) to them. So, for instance, God provides them with sustenance insofar as He is an all-generous, all-merciful, and all-sufficient sustainer (rāziq jawād ghanī raḥīm); He heals the sick insofar as He is the all-kind, all-clement, most-merciful healer (shāfin, muʿāfin, raʾūf, raḥīm); and He destroys the oppressors insofar as He is severe in violence and mighty in vengeance (shadīd al-baṭsh dhū intiqām ʿazīz), and so on and so forth. Therefore, there is no complex being in existence except that its existence has come about through the mediation of several of these Beautiful Names, one above another and one beside another. Whatever is more specific mediates between the thing itself and that which is more general, just as the name “the Healer” (al-shāfī) mediates between the sick person and between “the All-kind” (al-raʾūf) and “the Most-merciful” (al-raḥīm), and “the All-merciful” mediates between it and “the All-powerful” (al-qadīr).
In reality, this process of mediation outlined above represents the realization of a cause’s effectiveness. Or, you might say it brings a thing closer to the cause to actualize its effect. Therefore, from this you might say that God is the intercessor to some of His names via others of His names! In short, He is the ultimate intercessor and, in reality, there is no intercessor except Him. So understand this.
From the above, it is clear that there is no problem in calling Him an intercessor in the sense that He intercedes with Himself to Himself, meaning that one of His attributes intercedes with another one of His attributes on behalf of something else. This is just as people seek refuge from His wrath with His mercy, and from His justice to His grace. As for God interceding on behalf of something with someone other than Himself, this is utterly impossible!
And because some consider it problematic to call God an intercessor in this latter sense, namely in the sense of Him interceding with someone other than Himself, they have offered several different interpretations of this verse.
Some have said besides Him (dūnahu) in the phrase You do not have besides Him any guardian or intercessor actually means “with Him” and is also a circumstantial qualifier (ḥāl) for the pronoun you (-kum). This renders the meaning of the verse: “So long as you disregard Him, you have no guardian or intercessor with Him.” In other words, this negates the existence of any guardian or intercessor for them with God.
The problem with this reading is that even if dūn can be understood in the sense of “with”, the presence of min (“any”) indicates that dūn here carries the meaning of “other than.” There is also no sense in inserting the meaning of “disregarding” or changing the meaning of You do not have besides Him… to “you do not have with Him….”
Others have said that the meaning of intercessor (shafīʿ) in this verse is actually “helper” (nāṣir) and the phrase besides Him is a circumstantial qualifier for guardian (walī), which renders the meaning: “You have no guardian or helper besides Him.” The problem with this reading is that it needlessly adopts a metaphorical meaning for intercessor.
Others have said that the use of the term intercessor here is only for the sake of argument, as the idolaters whom the Qur’an is warning would often say that their gods were their intercessors and claim that each of them would intercede for them with God. This makes the meaning of the verse: “If a god is a guardian and an intercessor, then there is no guardian or intercessor except God.”
Others have said: Besides (dūn) means “with” (ʿind) and the pronoun “him” (-hu) in besides Him (dūnahu) actually refers to divine punishment. This renders the meaning: “You have no one close at hand who can save you from His punishment or any intercessor who can speak on your behalf.” However, the problem here is that the reading arbitrarily claims that the pronoun refers to God’s punishment without any evidence for this fact.
All of these readings of the verse are problematic because they resort to semantic and intellectual gymnastics in order to avoid understanding “intercessor” (shafīʿ) in the sense of one who grants intercession, while you will recall that this is its proper meaning.
Will you not then take admonition? This is a rhetorical question meant to rebuke them for continuing to turn away from all the rational evidence that the governance and direction of the cosmos is in God’s hands and that, therefore, He is the only true object of worship and that, aside from Him, they have no guardian or intercessor as they claim their gods to be.
يُدَبِّرُ الْأَمْرَ مِنَ السَّمَاءِ إِلَى الْأَرْضِ ثُمَّ يَعْرُجُ إِلَيْهِ فِي يَوْمٍ كَانَ مِقْدَارُهُ أَلْفَ سَنَةٍ مِمَّا تَعُدُّونَ ٥
(32:5) He directs the affair (amr) from the heavens to the earth; then it ascends toward Him in a day whose span is a thousand years by your reckoning.
This verse adds to what has already been explained by saying that the direction of the affairs of all beings rests with Him, which indicates that the Arabic word amr must be read as “affair” (shaʾn) rather than “command” (that is, the opposite of prohibition or nahī).
To direct a thing (tadbīr) means to place one thing behind (fī dābir) another, and to bring one affair after another. Therefore, this goes back to the coming into being of existent phenomena one after another, like a chain that extends between the heavens and the earth. Elsewhere, God says: There is not a thing but that its sources are with Us, and We do not send it down except in a known measure (). And He also says: Indeed We have created everything in a measure. ()
Saying …then it ascends toward Him… after He directs the affair from the heavens to the earth… suggests that tadbīr conveys a sense of descent (tanzīl), meaning: “He directs the affair to descend” or “He causes it to descend, stage by stage” from the heaven to the earth. Perhaps the affair (amr) to which this verse refers is the same as the one mentioned in the verse: Then He set them up as seven heavens in two days, and revealed in each heaven its affair ().
…then it ascends toward Him… implies that the meaning of heavens (samāʾ) in this verse is the station of divine proximity to which all crucial matters return, rather than heavens in the sense of the sky or a locale in the physical realm. After all, the affair is first described as descending and then ascending, and the apparent meaning of this is that it ascends by the same route as it first descended. And while, so far, the heavens and the earth have been mentioned, as well as ascent and descent, the fact that the descent takes place from the heavens and the ascent is to God indicates that the heavens here is the station of divine proximity and presence from which emanates the direction of all affairs. Or, it could indicate that the heavens are the centre from which the affairs of the earth are directed and God, who encompasses all things, sends down His directions from there. Perhaps the latter reading is easier to understand in light of the aforementioned verse and revealed in each heaven its affair ().
In a day whose span is a thousand years by your reckoning—Meaning that, in any case, this takes place in a period of time that, were it to be measured in terms of earthly time and motion, would stretch for a thousand years, as it is obvious that our system for measuring time in days, nights, months, and years only applies on the earth.
And insofar as the heavens are a realm of divine proximity and presence which transcends the bounds of time, the verse means that it is a period that, were it to be understood in terms of earthly events, would stretch for a thousand of the years that humans count.
But does this refer to the duration of the affair’s ascent, descent, and stay on earth combined; merely the duration of its ascent and descent combined but not its stay; the duration of its ascent and descent separately; or only the duration of its ascent? Based on the fact that in a day only qualifies it ascends toward Him, this would suggest that this only refers to its ascent, as is also implied by the verse: The angels and the Spirit ascend to Him in a day whose span is fifty thousand years ().
Then further questions arise: Assuming that this is the duration of the ascent, does this ascent refer to the ascent of all phenomena towards God or the ascent of the Day of Resurrection (meaning its duration)? And is it fifty thousand years in relation to a disbeliever because of the difficulty involved, or is a thousand years merely the duration of a single stage of the Day of Resurrection, which then consists of fifty stages, and each stage lasts a thousand years?
Then we might ask whether the phrase whose span is a thousand years is supposed to provide a precise figure, or is it simply meant to indicate a long duration, as in the verse Each of them is eager to live a thousand years (), which merely means he desires to live a very long life, although this meaning does not fit with the tone of the verse under discussion?
As you can see, the present verse entertains many possible readings. However, the most reasonable would be that in a day only qualifies it ascends toward Him and that this in turn refers to just one stage of the fifty stages of the Day of Resurrection. And God knows best!
ذَٰلِكَ عَالِمُ الْغَيْبِ وَالشَّهَادَةِ الْعَزِيزُ الرَّحِيمُ ٦
(32:6) That is the Knower of the sensible and the Unseen, the All-mighty, the All-merciful.
The vocabulary of this verse has already been explained and the relevance of the three Divine Names mentioned in the context is clear.
الَّذِي أَحْسَنَ كُلَّ شَيْءٍ خَلَقَهُ ۖ وَبَدَأَ خَلْقَ الْإِنْسَانِ مِنْ طِينٍ ٧
(32:7) Who perfected (aḥsana) everything that He created, and commenced man’s creation from clay.
Al-Rāghib says:
Ḥasan (lit. “good” but with specific meanings in different contexts) refers to anything that is pleasant and desirable. There are three kinds of good: that which reason deems good, that which desire deems good, and that which the senses deem good.
This defines good in relation to its qualities and categorises it according to the different ways in which human beings apprehend it.
In essence, to be ḥasan means that the different parts of a thing are in harmony with one another and that the sum of them are suitable for some external purpose or goal. Therefore, a face is ḥasan (“handsome”) when its various parts—the eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth, etc.—are in harmony with one another. Equally, justice is ḥasan (“good”) because it is conducive to goal of civic harmony, which means that each person receives their rightful due.
When we ponder on how things have been created, we see that each one’s parts are in harmony with one another, and that each one as a whole is fully-equipped with whatever is conducive to its perfection and felicity, in such a way that there is no way it could be better equipped for its purpose. Therefore, from this we conclude that all things are good in themselves and to the extent that they are in the best possible form.
As for any evil or badness that we perceive in things, this is down to one of two causes. First, the thing we perceive to be bad might derive its badness from privation (dhā ʿunwān ʿadamī), meaning from the absence of something, that is, something that does not exist. For instance, when we look at injustice (ẓulm), we see that it is not an act itself that is evil, but rather the act insofar as that act deprives another person of their right; equally, when we look at fornication (zinā), we see that the act is not something evil in itself, as the act is the same for fornication or wedlock (nikāḥ), but rather that it is evil insofar as it contravenes the divine law and is harmful to society.
Second, the thing we might perceive to be bad might only be bad relative to another thing. For example, the colocynth relative to the watermelon, the thistle relative to the rose, or the scorpion relative to the human being. These things are only considered evil in relation to their opposites and in relation to our natural disposition as human beings. In reality, this second source for the appearance of evil devolves to the first one we outlined.
In any case, nothing that exists is considered evil insofar as it exists and is a created entity. This is indicated by the verse: who perfected everything that He created when we place it beside the verse: Allah is creator of all things (). From these two verses we deduce: firstly, that creation (khulqah) entails perfection (ḥusn) and that every created thing is good insofar as it is a created thing; secondly, that all evil and badness is not something created insofar as it is evil or bad, such as sins and evil deeds insofar as all things are only evil relative to one another, and not in an absolute sense.
…and commenced man’s creation from clay—here man refers to the species as a whole; their creation was commenced from clay because all of the individual members of the species are descended from those who were created out of clay rather than by means of sexual reproduction, namely Adam and Eve The evidence for this reading is the following verse, which reads: Then He made his progeny from an extract of a base fluid—progeny (nasl) means offspring produced by two parents through sexual reproduction. The juxtaposition of the two ideas of man being created from clay and by procreation would not work if both referred to the same phenomenon; namely that the human created from clay was also created from base fluid. And were God to intend this meaning, it would have been more fitting to say: “Then He made him from the extract of a base fluid.”
ثُمَّ جَعَلَ نَسْلَهُ مِنْ سُلَالَةٍ مِنْ مَاءٍ مَهِينٍ ٨
(32:8) Then He made his progeny from an extract of a base fluid.
According to Majmaʿ al-Bayān, an “extract” (sulālah) is the quintessence of a thing that is extracted from it. A man’s semen is called an “extract” because it is extracted from his loins. “Base” (mahīn) means lowly and weak. The particle then (thumma) at the beginning of the verse signifies a gap of time.
The meaning of the verse is: Then We caused him to be born through procreation using an extract of lowly or weak fluid.
ثُمَّ سَوَّاهُ وَنَفَخَ فِيهِ مِنْ رُوحِهِ ۖ وَجَعَلَ لَكُمُ السَّمْعَ وَالْأَبْصَارَ وَالْأَفْئِدَةَۚ قَلِيلًا مَا تَشْكُرُونَ ٩
(32:9) Then He proportioned him and breathed into him of His Spirit, and made for you the hearing, the sight, and the hearts. Little do you thank.
“To proportion” (taswiyah) means to shape something or to complete a task. And breathed into him of His Spirit is a metaphor which compares God’s spirit (rūḥ) to the breath that He inhales before exhaling into a receptacle other than Himself. It is described as His spirit (with the possessive construct) to magnify the station of the spirit (as opposed to saying that this spirit was a part of God).
The meaning of the verse is: Then He shaped the human being whose creation had begun from clay and who was made to procreate via an extract of a base fluid, and He blew into him from the noble spirit that belonged to Him.
…and made for you the hearing, the sight, and the hearts—This enumerates the blessings that God granted to the human being in the form of sense perception and cognitive faculties; hearing and sight belong to the senses, and the heart belongs to cognition and is more general than the particular faculties of the imagination or the reason.
Little do you thank—meaning you give little in the way of thanks. This sentence is an aside meant as a reproach.
Some have suggested the sentence is a circumstantial qualifier, which would render the meaning: “He made for you the hearing, the sight and the hearts even though you give little in the way of thanks.” But however we read the sentence, its force is one of rebuke and complaint.
The transition in address from the third-person (“he”) to the second-person plural (“you”) is to make clear that God’s blessings not only encompass all His creatures but that they exceed the thanks these creatures give, for none of them are able to fully thank God for His blessings but also many of them are less grateful than they could be.
وَقَالُوا أَإِذَا ضَلَلْنَا فِي الْأَرْضِ أَإِنَّا لَفِي خَلْقٍ جَدِيدٍ ۚ بَلْ هُمْ بِلِقَاءِ رَبِّهِمْ كَافِرُونَ ١٠
(32:10) They say, When we have been lost in the dust, shall we be indeed created anew? Rather they disbelieve in the encounter with their Lord.
This verse quotes an argument of those who deny the Resurrection which rests on its improbability. Some say that “to be lost in the dust” means to have dissipated, as one might say “the blessing was lost” to mean that it had gone completely. Others say that it means to have disappeared. In any case, the force of the argument is: “When we have died and our bodies have disintegrated so completely into the earth that you can no longer identify any part of them and there is not even any memory of our having existed, do you mean to say that we will be created again as we were before?”
This question is, of course, rhetorical and its force is to deny the possibility of this happening. Created anew refers to the Resurrection.
Rather they disbelieve in the encounter with their Lord: This strikes off from the substance of their words When we have been lost in the dust…, as if to say: “They do not deny the new creation because they deny Our power to bring it about or for any other reason. It is because they deny that they will ever come back to Us.” This is why the Qur’an responds to their words with evidence that they will, in fact, return to God.
قُلْ يَتَوَفَّاكُمْ مَلَكُ الْمَوْتِ الَّذِي وُكِّلَ بِكُمْ ثُمَّ إِلَىٰ رَبِّكُمْ تُرْجَعُونَ١١
(32:11) Say, You will be taken away by the angel of death, who has been charged with you. Then you will be brought back to your Lord.
“To take something away” (tawaffī) means to grasp something in its entirety, such as taking one’s due or taking repayment on a loan.
…the angel of death, who has been charged with you: It is said this means that he has been charged with causing you to die and taking your soul. However, the verse is unrestricted and therefore more general in meaning than this.
The present verse attributes the act of taking away (tawaffī) to the angel of death. However, the verse: Allah takes the souls at the time of their death () ascribes this to God; and the verses: When death approaches anyone of you, Our messengers take him away () and: Those whom the angels take away while they are wronging themselves () ascribe this to the angels and the messengers. The reason for this is that each verse is looking at a different level of the causal chain. The immediate cause is the messenger angels who assist the angel of death, above whom is the angel of death who commands them according to God’s directions. Above all of them and encompassing them entirely, of course, is God, who is the ultimate cause and the cause of all causes. An apt analogy for this is the act of writing; is it the pen, the hand, or the person that writes, or is it all three?
Then you will be brought back to your Lord: This is the return which the previous verse refers to as the encounter (liqāʾ) which will take place during the Resurrection which happens both as a result of the angel of death taking a person’s life and sometime after it, as signified by the use of then (thumma).
In whatever way we approach it, this verse responds to the argument of the idolaters that their bodies will have become lost in the dust of the earth and that therefore the Resurrection cannot take place. However, it is obvious that saying the angel of death causes them to die does not address the core of their argument. Therefore, the assertion then you will be brought back to your Lord appears to be an empty claim without evidence to support it. Such a style of argument hardly befits God, so how are we to explain this verse?
God commands His messenger to respond to their argument for the improbability of the Resurrection by making the counter-claim that death does not represent the end of a person. On the contrary, the angel of death who has been entrusted with you will take you fully from your bodies—meaning he will extract your souls, in the sense of severing their bonds to the body. Your souls are the true essence of your being. Therefore, whatever is “you” is preserved and kept safe—none of it will be lost on the earth. Only your bodies will be lost as they transform from one thing into another, but they were already changing from the moment they came into being. Therefore, what is truly “you” will be kept safe until you return to your Lord at the time of the Resurrection and the souls return to their bodies.
This refutes their claim that the Resurrection is rendered impossible by the scattering of their bodies, regardless of whether by this they mean that the Resurrection seems highly improbable or that the destruction of the body results in the loss of a person’s individuality, in which case there will be nothing left to bring back. Contrary to this claim, the verse articulates that the reality of the human being is his soul—that thing he calls “I”—and this soul is not the body. On the contrary, the body acquires its individuality from the soul. This soul does not disintegrate upon death, nor does it cease to exist, rather it is kept safe in God’s power until it is permitted to return to its Lord for final judgement and recompense, whereat it will be resurrected in the manner described by God.
The above makes clear the connection between You will be taken away and When we have been lost in the dust and shows that it is, in fact, an effective argument to the objection the speaker has raised. However, some commentators have run into problems when they sought to interpret taken away to mean death in general, without paying attention to the fact that God had chosen to express Himself with this vocabulary. This has forced them to engage in some rather contorted reasoning to show the connection between the two verses.
Secondly, it also shows that this verse is one of the clearest indications in the Qur’an that the soul is not identical with the body or any particular part or state of the body.
وَلَوْ تَرَىٰ إِذِ الْمُجْرِمُونَ نَاكِسُو رُءُوسِهِمْ عِنْدَ رَبِّهِمْ رَبَّنَا أَبْصَرْنَا وَسَمِعْنَا فَارْجِعْنَا نَعْمَلْ صَالِحًا إِنَّا مُوقِنُونَ ١٢
(32:12) Were you to see when the guilty hang their heads before their Lord, Our Lord! We have seen and heard. Send us back so that we may act righteously. Indeed we are convinced.
“To hang one’s head” is to lower it. Based on the coda of this verse, the guilty (mujrimīn) are those who denied the Resurrection. The use of the definitive article for them suggests that it refers to a specific group, namely “those who denied the Resurrection and said: When we have been lost in the dust….”
There is a parallel between the expression used for the Resurrection before their Lord and what was said about them before, namely: Rather they disbelieve in the encounter with their Lord (). In other words, they will stand at the encounter with their Lord in a way that they cannot deny, hence their words we have seen and heard and their request to be sent back to act righteously, as they now see that their salvation lies only in faith and good deeds. On the Day of Resurrection, they now have attained absolutely certainty of faith but have no good deeds to accompany it. Therefore they confess that they believe but ask to be sent back to this world to do righteous deeds in order that they might win salvation.
So the meaning of the verse is: Were you to see those who were guilty of denying the encounter with God lowering their heads out of shame, humiliation, and regret as they stood before their Lord, saying: “Our Lord, we have seen with our own eyes and heard with obedience. So send us back that we might act righteously. We are certain now!”
In short, you see them denying the encounter with their Lord now, but were you to see them when they are overcome with shame and humiliation on the Day of Resurrection, you would see them lower their heads and accept that which they deny today and ask to be sent back to this world. But they will not be sent back.
وَلَوْ شِئْنَا لَآتَيْنَا كُلَّ نَفْسٍ هُدَاهَا وَلَٰكِنْ حَقَّ الْقَوْلُ مِنِّي لَأَمْلَأَنَّ جَهَنَّمَ مِنَ الْجِنَّةِ وَالنَّاسِ أَجْمَعِينَ ١٣
(32:13) Had We wished, We would have given every soul its guidance, but My word became due: Surely I will fill hell with the jinn and humans together.
Meaning: Had we wished, we would have given everyone—believers and disbelievers alike—the guidance they needed. We would have done this by the disbeliever’s own free choice to choose guidance just as we willed that the believer be guided by his own free choice, without any compulsion or force, as these would render moral obligations and the final recompense for one’s actions pointless.
…but My word became due: Surely I will fill hell with the jinn and humans together—meaning: But there was a prior decree from Me, namely to fill hell with the jinn and humans. This decree is found in God’s words to Iblīs when he refused to bow to Adam: He said, By Your might, I will surely pervert them, except Your exclusive servants among them. He said, The truth is that and I speak the truth: I will surely fill hell with you and all of those who follow you (). Therefore, He decreed that He would send the followers of Iblīs to eternal punishment.
This means that He will not guide them because of the wrongdoing and profligacy they have displayed by forsaking the garb of servanthood (ʿubūdiyyah), as God says: and Allah does not guide the wrongdoing lot (), and Allah does not guide the transgressing lot (), and there are many other verses in the same vein.
فَذُوقُوا بِمَا نَسِيتُمْ لِقَاءَ يَوْمِكُمْ هَٰذَا إِنَّا نَسِينَاكُمْ ۖ وَذُوقُوا عَذَابَ الْخُلْدِ بِمَا كُنْتُمْ تَعْمَلُونَ ١٤
(32:14) So taste for your having forgotten the encounter of this day of yours. We have forgotten you. Taste the everlasting punishment because of what you used to do.
This follows logically from but My word became due. “To forget something (nisyān)” literally means for its image to vanish from memory but it is also used in the sense of paying no attention to something of importance, and this is the sense in which it is used here.
The meaning of the verse is: Because it was decreed that the followers of Iblīs should taste punishment, so taste the punishment because you paid no heed to the encounter of this day, to the extent that you stubbornly denied it and did not act righteously to earn reward on it thereby. So, on this day, We shall pay no heed to your happiness or salvation.
The phrase Taste the everlasting punishment because of what you used to do emphasises and clarifies the preceding phrase, with the meaning: What they are being told to taste is the everlasting punishment, and their “having forgotten the encounter of this day” refers to their evil deeds.
Examining Narrations
- In al-Durr al-Manthūr, al-Naḥḥās relates from Ibn ʿAbbās:
Sūrat al-Sajdah was revealed in Mecca, save for the three verses beginning with: Is someone who is faithful like someone who is a transgressor? They are not equal ().
- In the same source, Saʿīd ibn Manṣūr and Ibn Abī Shaybah relate from ʿAlī:
The fixed prostrations (ʿazāʾim) of the Qur’an are the alif lām mīm sajdah, ḥā mīm tanzīl sajdah, al-Najm, and read in the Name of your Lord who created.
[That is, Sūrat al-Sajdah, 32; Sūrat Fuṣṣilāt, 41, Sūrat al-Najm, and Sūrat al-ʿAlaq, 96.]
- In al-Khiṣāl, it is narrated from Imām al-Ṣādiq:
The fixed prostrations (ʿazāʾim) are four: read in the Name of your Lord who created, al-Najm, tanzīl sajdah, and ḥā mīm sajdah.
[That is, Sūrat al-ʿAlaq, 96; Sūrat al-Najm, 53; Sūrat al-Sajdah, 32; and Sūrat Fuṣṣilāt, 41.]
- In al-Durr al-Manthūr, Aḥmad and Ṭabarānī relate from al-Sharīd ibn Suwayd:
The Prophet caught sight of a man who had let his wrapper (izār) hang low. He told him, “Lift up your wrapper!”
He said, “O Messenger of God! I have a deformity in my foot that causes my knees to knock together.”
He replied, “Lift up your wrapper! All that God creates is beautiful (ḥasan).”
- In al-Faqīh, it is related:
Imām al-Ṣādiq was asked about the verses: Allah takes the souls at the time of their death… (), You will be taken away by the angel of death, who has been charged with you (), …those whom the angels take away while they are pure… (), Those whom the angels take away while they are wronging themselves (), Our messengers take him away (), and Were you to see when the angels take away the faithless (). [He was asked,] “At any moment, at all the places in this world, only God knows how many people might pass away. So how can all of these verses be understood together?”
He said, “God has given the angel of death assistants amongst the angels to take people’s souls. He is like the chief of police (ṣāḥib al-shurṭah), who has human helpers to take care of his needs. Therefore, the angels take them away and the angel of death takes them away from the angels with what he seizes, and God takes them from the angel of death.”
- In al-Durr al-Manthūr, Ibn Abī Ḥātim and Abū al-Shaykh relate from Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī:
God’s Messenger went to call upon a man from the Anṣār who was unwell. When he entered, he saw the angel of death standing beside the man’s head. God’s Messenger said to him: “O angel of death! By kind to my companion, for he is a believer.”
The angel replied: “Be glad, O Muḥammad! For indeed I am kind to every believer. And know, O Muḥammad, that I do visit frequently. So beware! God has created no family member, no city-dweller nor tent-dweller on land or on sea, except that I inspect them five times every day and night. I know everything about them, great or small, better than they know themselves. By God, O Muḥammad, I cannot take the soul of a fly until God tells me to take it!”
- And in Tafsīr al-Qummī, about the verse Had We wished We would have given every soul its guidance (), we read:
If we had wished to make them all infallible (maʿṣūm), we could have.
Author’s comments: Infallibility (ʿiṣmah) does not interfere with free will, so there is no contradiction between this narration and what we have said already in the explanation of this verse.
Discourse
The discussion “A Discussion on the Nature of the Primordial Human (al-insān al-awwalī)” appears here in the printed volume. Read it in the Al-Mizan App.
This corresponds to the sixteenth English volume. (Pub.) ↩︎