Verses 8–10
In this second section of verses from the sūrah, God informs His Prophet with reverence and awe that He has sent him as a witness, a bearer of good news and a warner, to whom obedience is counted as obedience to God and to whom swearing allegiance is counted as swearing allegiance to God. The first section of verses enumerated God’s blessings upon (1) His Prophet: granting him victory and forgiveness, and completing His blessings, guidance and assistance, and (2) upon the faithful: by casting composure into their hearts and admitting them to paradise. It also warned the idolaters and the hypocrites of God’s wrath, His curse and the fire.
Commentary
إِنَّا أَرْسَلْنَاكَ شَاهِدًا وَمُبَشِّرًا وَنَذِيرًا ٨
(48:8) Indeed We have sent you as a witness, and as a bearer of good news and warner.
Here, his being a witness means him witnessing the deeds of faith and faithlessness and righteous or vicious behavior. And God has said more than once that he is a witness. We have discussed this witnessing fully already; he witnesses in this world but he bears witness in the next.
Meanwhile, his being a bearer of good news means conveying good news to those who have faith and are Godwary through seeking nearness to God and seeking His abundant reward. On the other hand, he is a warner because he warns and threatens those who disbelieve and turn away of a painful punishment.
لِتُؤْمِنُوا بِاللَّهِ وَرَسُولِهِ وَتُعَزِّرُوهُ وَتُوَقِّرُوهُ وَتُسَبِّحُوهُ بُكْرَةً وَأَصِيلًا ٩
(48:9) that you may have faith in God and His Messenger, and that you may support Him and revere Him, and glorify Him morning and evening.
The most well-known mode of recitation (qirāʾah) for this verse is reading the four verbs with the second-person tāʾ; however, Ibn Kathīr and Abū ʿAmr recite them with the third-person yāʾ, and their recitation seems more probable given the context of the verse. In any case, the lām prefixed to have faith (li tuʾminū) signifies causation. In other words: We sent you… that you [pl.] might have faith in God.
“Support” (taʿzīr), according to what has been said, means assistance. “Reverence” (tawqīr) means to hold someone in high regard, as when God says: What is the matter with you that you do not look upon Allah with veneration (). It appears that the pronouns in and that you may support Him and revere Him, and glorify Him all refer to God. This renders the meaning: “We sent you… that they might have faith in God and His Messenger, and that they might support Him with their hands and their tongues, and revere Him and glorify Him—namely, through prayer—in the morning and the evening.”
It is said: The pronouns in and that you may support Him and revere Him refer to the Messenger while and glorify Him refers to God. However, what renders this reading weak is that it requires pronouns that are visibly in harmony to be given different referents.
إِنَّ الَّذِينَ يُبَايِعُونَكَ إِنَّمَا يُبَايِعُونَ اللَّهَ يَدُ اللَّهِ فَوْقَ أَيْدِيهِمْ ۚ فَمَنْ نَكَثَ فَإِنَّمَا يَنْكُثُ عَلَىٰ نَفْسِهِ ۖ وَمَنْ أَوْفَىٰ بِمَا عَاهَدَ عَلَيْهُ اللَّهَ فَسَيُؤْتِيهِ أَجْرًا عَظِيمًا ١٠
(48:10) Indeed those who swear allegiance to you, swear allegiance only to God: the hand of God is above their hands. So whosoever breaks his oath, breaks it only to his own detriment, and whoever fulfils the covenant he has made with God, He will give him a great reward.
“Swearing allegiance” (bayʿah) is a pledge to give one’s obedience to someone. In his Mufradāt, al-Rāghib says: “You give allegiance to the Sultan if you guarantee to give him your obedience in matters within his purview.” The term is actually derived from the word bayʿ, meaning sale, in its common sense. This is because it was their custom, when they wanted to conclude a contract of sale, that the seller would give his hand to the buyer; it was as if this action symbolized the transference of ownership because this is the transference of the right of disposal (taṣarrufāt), which is mostly exercised by a person’s hand. Therefore, when the seller shook the buyer’s hand, it was as if this transferred those rights from one hand to another. And this is why the act of shaking hands when giving a promise of obedience is called bayʿah; the essence of its meaning is that the one pledging allegiance is giving his hand to the Sultan to do with as he pleases.
Indeed those who swear allegiance to you, swear allegiance only to God—this makes pledging allegiance to the Prophet equivalent to pledging allegiance to God Himself. The reason for this is that the promise of obedience that they offer to him they are actually offering to God because obedience to the Prophet is obedience to God. Then, in order to affirm this more fully, He says: the hand of God is above their hands. This makes the Prophet’s hand God’s hand, just as He makes the Prophet’s throwing His own throwing in the verse: and you did not throw when you threw, rather it was Allah who threw ().
And there are many such verses where God ascribes the work of the Prophet to Himself, for example:
Whoever obeys the Messenger certainly obeys Allah. ()
Yet it is not you that they deny, but it is Allah’s signs that the wrongdoers impugn. ()
You have no hand in the matter. ()
God says: So whosoever breaks his oath, breaks it only to his own detriment—to break one’s oath means to violate one’s pledge of allegiance. This sentence follows logically from the sentence Indeed those who swear allegiance to you, swear allegiance only to God. So it means: If pledging allegiance to you is pledging allegiance to God, then whoever breaks his oath of allegiance is breaking his allegiance to God. He will only hurt himself by doing this, just as He will only benefit himself by staying true to his pledge, because God is utterly needless of the worlds.
And whoever fulfils the covenant he has made with God, He will give him a great reward—this is a beautiful promise for those who preserve their covenant and fulfil it.
And this verse would seem to suggest that when they pledged allegiance to him, it was the Prophet who placed his hand on top of their hands, not the other way around.
Commentators have different opinions about the words the hand of God is above their hands.
It is said that it is a metaphorical allusion which serves to affirm and emphasize the meaning of what came before it, namely that pledging allegiance to the Messenger is equivalent to pledging allegiance to God without any distinction. It gives the impression that God is one of those people making this pledge, so it affirms the presence of his hand above the hands of those who pledge allegiance to God’s Messenger in the place of the Messenger’s hand. However it is not suitable for the sake of God’s sanctity to imagine Him in a form He has divested Himself of.
It is said: The meaning of God’s “hand” (yad) is His power and assistance. In other words, God’s power and assistance are above their power and assistance, so trust in God’s assistance rather than theirs. However, the context is one of magnifying the pledge of allegiance to the Prophet and that their pledging allegiance to him is equivalent to pledging allegiance to God. This means that trusting in God and His assistance, even though it is undoubtedly good in any situation, is foreign to the immediate context of the verse.
It is said: The meaning of “hand” is God’s gifts and blessings, namely that God has blessed them with divine reward or with the success of being able to pledge allegiance, and this blessing is above any good that they are doing for His Prophet by pledging allegiance to him.
It is said: It means that His blessing them with guidance is greater than whatever good they are doing for His Prophet by obeying him.
And there are other interpretations besides the ones we have mentioned that are without basis.
Examining Narrations
- In al-Durr al-Manthūr, Ibn ʿAdī, Ibn Mardawayh, al-Khaṭīb [al-Baghdādī], and Ibn ʿAsākir—in his Tārīkh—narrate from Jābir b. ʿAbd Allāh:
When the verse that you may support Him was revealed to God’s Messenger, he asked his companions: “What is that?”
They said: “God and His Messenger know better!”
He said: “That you assist Him.”
- In ʿUyūn, it is narrated from ʿAbd al-Salām b. Ṣāliḥ al-Harawī:
I asked ʿAlī b. Mūsā al-Riḍā: “O son of God’s Messenger! What do you say about the tradition narrated by the authorities of traditions: that the faithful will visit their Lord from their abodes in paradise?”
He said: “O Abū Ṣilat, verily God favored His Prophet, Muḥammad, above all creatures, even the Prophets and the angels, and made obedience to him obedience to Himself, pledging allegiance to him pledging allegiance to Himself and visiting him in this world and the hereafter visiting Himself! God says: Whoever obeys the Messenger certainly obeys Allah (), and: Indeed those who swear allegiance to you, swear allegiance only to God (), and the Prophet said: ‘Whomsoever visits me while I am alive or after my death, He has visited God.’
“His station in paradise is the highest station and whoever visits him at his station in paradise from their abodes has visited God!”
- In Kitāb al-Irshād, al-Mufīd narrates in the tradition of the pledge of allegiance given to Imām al-Riḍā:
Maʾmūn sat and set two grand cushions down for al-Riḍā so that he would have the same kind of seat and covers. He seated al-Riḍā in the court, wearing a turban and a sword. Then he ordered his son, ʿAbbās b. al-Maʾmūn, to be the first of the people to make the pledge of allegiance to him. Al-Riḍā raised his hand and touched his own face with it, then placed its palm upon their faces. Al-Maʾmūn demanded: “Stretch out your hand for the pledge of allegiance.”
Al-Riḍā said: “The Messenger of God used to take the pledge in this way when the people pledged allegiance to him.”
Then, people pledged allegiance to him while his hand was above their hands.
Meaning have faith (tuʾminū), support (tuʿazzirū), revere (tuwaqqirū) and glorify (tusabbiḥū) are all read with a tāʾ at their beginning, which means their subjects are the second-person plural (that is, “you”). The recitation of Ibn Kathīr and Abū ʿAmr, which places a yāʾ in place of the tāʾ, makes this into a third-person plural (that is, “they”). [Trans.] ↩︎