Verse 1
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful:
Verse 2
Praise be to God, is a predicate of a nominal clause, the content of which is intended to extol God [by stating that]: He possesses the praise of all creatures, or that He [alone] deserves their praise. God is a proper noun for the One truly worthy of worship; Lord of all Worlds, that is, [He is] the One Who owns all of creation: humans, jinn, angels, animals and others as well, each of which may be referred to as a ‘world’; one says ‘the world of men’, or ‘world of the jinn’ etc. This plural form with the yā’ and the nūn [sc. ‘ālamīn] is used to denote, predominantly, cognizant beings (ūlū ‘ilm). The expression [‘ālamīn] relates to [the term] ‘sign’ (‘alāma), since it is an indication of the One that created it.
Verse 3
The Compassionate, the Merciful: that is to say, the One who possesses ‘mercy’, which means to want what is good for those who deserve it.
Verse 4
Master of the Day of Judgement: that is, [the day of] requite, the Day of Resurrection. The reason for the specific mention [of the Day of Judgement] is that the mastery of none shall appear on that Day except that of God, may He be exalted, as is indicated by [God’s words] ‘Whose is the Kingdom today?’ ‘God’s’ [Q. 40:16] (if one reads it mālik [as opposed to malik], then this signifies that He has possession of the entire affair on the Day of Resurrection, or else that He is ever described by this [expression], in the same way as [He is described as] ‘Forgiver of sin’ (ghāfir al-dhanb). Thus, one can validly take it as an adjective of a definite noun).
Verse 5
You [alone] we worship, and You [alone] we ask for help: that is to say, we reserve worship for You [alone] by way of acknowledging Your Oneness (tawhīd) and so on, and we ask for [Your] assistance in worship and in other things.
Verse 6
Guide us to the straight path: that is, ‘show us the way to it’. This is substituted by:
Verse 7
the path of those whom You have favoured, with guidance (from alladhīna together with its relative clause is substituted by [ghayri l-maghdūbi ‘alayhim]) not [the path] of those against whom there is wrath, namely, the Jews, and nor of those who are astray, namely, the Christians. The subtle meaning implied by this substitution is that the guided ones are neither the Jews nor the Christians. But God knows best what is right, and to Him is the Return and the [final] Resort. May God bless our master Muhammad (s), his Family and Companions and grant them everlasting peace. Sufficient is God for us; an excellent Guardian is He. There is no power and no strength save in God, the High, the Tremendous.
Verse 1
Alif lām mīm: God knows best what He means by these [letters].
Verse 2
That, meaning, this, Book, which Muhammad (s) recites, in it there is no doubt, no uncertainty, that it is from God (the negation [lĀ rayba fĪhi] is the predicate of dhĀlika; the use of the demonstrative here is intended to glorify [the Book]). A guidance (hudĀ is a second predicate, meaning that it [the Book] ‘guides’), for the God-fearing, namely, those that tend towards piety by adhering to commands and avoiding things prohibited, thereby guarding themselves from the Fire;
Verse 3
who believe in, that is, who accept the truth of, the Unseen, what is hidden from them of the Resurrection, Paradise and the Fire; and maintain the prayer, that is to say, who perform it giving it its proper due; and of what We have provided them, that is, of what we have bestowed upon them, expend, in obedience to God;
Verse 4
and who believe in what has been revealed to you, namely, the Qur’ān; and what was revealed before you, that is, the Torah, the Gospel and other [scriptures]; and of the Hereafter, they are certain, that is, they know [it is real].
Verse 5
Those, as described in the way mentioned, are upon guidance from their Lord, those are the ones that will prosper, that is, who will succeed in entering Paradise and be saved from the Fire.
Verse 6
As for the disbelievers, the likes of Abū Jahl, Abū Lahab and such; alike it is for them whether you have warned them or have not warned them, they do not believe, as God knows very well, so do not hope that they will believe (read a-andhartahum pronouncing both hamzas, or by not pronouncing the second, making it an alif instead, and inserting an alif between the one not pronounced and the other one, or leaving [this insertion]; al-indhār [‘warning’] is to give knowledge of something, and simultaneously instil an element of fear).
Verse 7
God has set a seal on their hearts, impressing on them and making certain that no good enters them; and on their hearing, [in which He has] deposited something so that they cannot profit from the truth they hear; and on their eyes is a covering, that is, a veil so that they do not see the truth; and for them there will be a mighty chastisement, that is, intense and everlasting.
Verse 8
The following was revealed concerning the hypocrites: and some people there are who say, ‘We believe in God and the Last Day’, that is, in the Day of Resurrection because it is the very last day; but they are not believers (the [plural] import of man [in man yaqūl, ‘who says’] is taken into account here, as expressed by a pronoun [hum] that expresses this [plural] meaning).
Verse 9
They would deceive God and the believers, by manifesting the opposite of the unbelief they hide, so that they can avoid His rulings in this world; and only themselves they deceive (yukhādi‘ūn), for the evil consequences of their deception will rebound upon them, as they are disgraced in this world when God makes known to His Prophet what they are hiding, and they will be punished in the Hereafter; and they are not aware, and they do not know that they are actually deceiving themselves (mukhāda‘a [although a third verbal form, from khāda‘a] actually denotes a one-way action, such as [when one says] ‘āqabtu al-lissa, ‘I punished the thief’ [using the third verbal form ‘āqaba]; the mention of ‘God’ in [this statement] is for [rhetorical] effect; a variant reading [for wa-mā yukhādi‘ūna] has wa-mā yakhda‘ūna).
Verse 10
In their hearts is a sickness: doubt and hypocrisy, which ails their hearts, debilitating them; and God has increased their sickness with what He has revealed in the Qur’ān, since they disbelieve it; and there awaits them a painful chastisement because they used to lie (read yukadhdhibūn to imply [that they used to call] the Prophet of God [a liar], or yakdhibūn to imply their [mendacity when] saying ‘we believe’).
Verse 11
When it is said to them, that is, these latter, ‘Do not spread corruption in the land’, through unbelief and hindering [people from] faith, They say, ‘We are only putting things right’, that is, ‘we are not engaging in corruption’. God, exalted be He, refutes them, saying:
Verse 12
Truly (a-lā, ‘truly’, is for alerting), intended emphatically, they are the agents of corruption, but they perceive, this, not.
Verse 13
When it is said to them, ‘Believe as the people believe’, that is, as the Companions of the Prophet (s), They say, ‘Shall we believe as fools believe?’, that is, as the ignorant do? No we do not follow their way. The exalted One refutes them, saying: Truly, they are the foolish ones, but they know, this, not.
Verse 14
When they meet (laqū is actually laquyū, but the damma has been omitted, being too cumbersome for pronunciation; likewise the yā’ [is omitted], because it is unvocalised and is followed by a wāw); those who believe, they say, ‘We believe’; but when they go apart, away from them and return, to their devils, their leaders, they say, ‘We are with you, in religion; we were only mocking, them [the believers] by feigning belief.
Verse 15
God [Himself] mocks them, requiting them for their mockery, leaving them, that is, giving them respite, in their insolence, that is, in their transgressing the limits of unbelief; bewildered, wavering, in perplexity (ya‘mahūn is a circumstantial qualifier).
Verse 16
Those are they who have bought error for guidance, that is, they have exchanged the latter for the former; so their commerce has not profited them, that is to say, they have gained nothing from it, indeed, they have lost, because their destination is the Fire, made everlasting for them; nor are they guided, in what they did.
Verse 17
Their likeness, the way they are in their hypocrisy, is as the likeness of one who kindled, that is, [one who] lit a fire in darkness, and when it illumined all about him, so that he is able to see, and to feel warm and secure from those he feared, God took away their light, extinguishing it (the plural pronoun [in nūrihim] takes into account the [plural] import of alladhī); and left them in darkness, unable to see, what is around them, confused as to the way, in fear; likewise are those who have found [temporary] security by professing faith, but who will meet with terror and punishment upon death; these [last] are:
Verse 18
deaf, to the truth, so that they cannot hear it and accept it; dumb, mute as regards goodness, unable to speak of it; and, blind, to the path of guidance, so that they cannot perceive it; they shall not return, from error.
Verse 19
Or, the likeness of them is as a cloudburst, that is, [the likeness of them is] as people are during rain (ka-sayyib: the term is originally sayyūb, from [the verb] sāba, yasūbu, meaning ‘it came down’); out of the heaven, out of the clouds, in which clouds is darkness, layer upon layer, and thunder, the angel in charge of them [sc. the clouds]; it is also said that this [thunder] is actually the sound of his voice; and lightning, the flash caused by his voice which he uses to drive them — they, the people under the rain, put their fingers, that is, their fingertips, in their ears against, because of, the thunderclaps, the violent sound of thunder, in order not to hear it, cautious of, fearful of, death, if they were to hear it. Similar is the case with these: when the Qur’ān is revealed, in which there is mention of the unbelief that is like darkness, the threat of punishment that is like the sound of thunder, and the clear arguments that are like the clear lightning, they shut their ears in order not to hear it and thereby incline towards [true] faith and abandon their religion, which for them would be death; and God encompasses the disbelievers in both knowledge and power, so they cannot escape Him.
Verse 20
The lightning well-nigh, almost, snatches away their sight, that is, takes it away swiftly; whensoever it gives them light, they walk in it, in its light; and when the darkness is over them, they stop, that is, they stand still: a simile of the perturbation that the Qur’ānic arguments cause in their hearts, and of their acknowledging the truths of what they love to hear and recoiling from what they detest; had God willed, He would have taken away their hearing and their sight, that is, the exterior faculty, in the same way that He took away their inner one; Truly, God has power over all things, [that] He wills, as for example, His taking away of the above-mentioned.
Verse 21
O people, of Mecca, worship, profess the oneness of, your Lord Who created you, made you when you were nothing, and created those that were before you; so that you may be fearful, of His punishment by worshipping Him (la‘alla, ‘so that’, is essentially an optative, but when spoken by God it denotes an affirmative),
Verse 22
He Who assigned to you, created [for you], the earth for a couch, like a carpet that is laid out, neither extremely hard, nor extremely soft so as to make it impossible to stand firm upon it; and heaven for an edifice, like a roof; and sent down from the heaven water, wherewith He brought forth, all types of, fruits for your provision; so set not up compeers to God, that is partners in worship, while you know that He is the Creator, that you create not and that only One that creates can be God.
Verse 23
And if you are in doubt, in uncertainty, concerning what We have revealed to Our servant, Muhammad (s), of the Qur’ān, that it is from God, then bring a sūra like it, that is also revealed (min mithlihi: min is explicative, that is, a sūra like it in its eloquence, fine arrangement and its bestowal of knowledge of the Unseen; a sūra is a passage with a beginning and end made up of a minimum of three verses); and call your witnesses, those other gods that you worship, besides God, that is, other than Him, so that it can be seen, if you are truthful, in [your claim] that Muhammad (s) speaks it from himself. So do this, for you are also fluent speakers of Arabic like him. When they could not do this, God said:
Verse 24
And if you do not, do what was mentioned because you are incapable, and you will not (a parenthetical statement), that is, never [will you be able to], because of its inimitability, then fear, through belief in God and [belief] that this is not the words of a human, the Fire, whose fuel is men, disbelievers, and stones, like their very idols, indicating that its heat is extreme, since it burns with the [stones] mentioned, unlike the fires of this world that burn with wood and similar materials; prepared, and made ready, for disbelievers, so that they are punished in it (this [phrase, u‘iddat li’l-kāfirīna, ‘prepared for disbelievers’] is either a new sentence or a sustained circumstantial qualifier).
Verse 25
And give good tidings to, inform, those who believe, who have faith in God, and perform righteous deeds, such as the obligatory and supererogatory [rituals], that theirs shall be Gardens, of trees, and habitations, underneath which, that is, underneath these trees and palaces, rivers run (tajrī min tahtihā’l-anhāru), that is, there are waters in it (al-nahr is the place in which water flows [and is so called] because the water carves [yanhar] its way through it; the reference to it as ‘running’ is figurative); whensoever they are provided with fruits therefrom, that is, whenever they are given to eat from these gardens, they shall say, ‘This is what, that is, the like of what we were provided with before’, that is, before this, in Paradise, since its fruits are similar (and this is evidenced by [the following statement]): they shall be given it, the provision, in perfect semblance, that is, resembling one another in colour, but different in taste; and there for them shall be spouses, of houris and others, purified, from menstruation and impurities; therein they shall abide: dwelling therein forever, neither perishing nor departing therefrom. And when the Jews said, ‘Why does God strike a similitude about flies, where He says, And if a fly should rob them of anything [Q. 22:73] and about a spider, where He says, As the likeness of the spider [Q. 29:41]: what does God want with these vile creatures? God then revealed the following:
Verse 26
God is not ashamed to strike, to make, a similitude (mathal: is the first direct object; mā either represents an indefinite noun described by what comes after it and constitutes a second direct object, meaning ‘whatever that similitude may be’; or it [the mā] is extra to emphasise the vileness [involved], so that what follows constitutes the second direct object); even of a gnat, (ba‘ūda is the singular of ba‘ūd), that is, small flies; or anything above it, that is, larger than it, so that this explanation is not affected [by the size of the creature] with regard to the judgement [God is making]; as for the believers, they know it, the similitude, is the truth, established and given in this instance, from their Lord; but as for disbelievers, they say, ‘What did God desire by this for a similitude?’ (mathalan is a specification, meaning, ‘by this similitude’; mā is an interrogative of rejection and is the subject; dhā means alladhī, whose relative clause contains its predicate, in other words, ‘what use is there in it?’). God then responds to them saying: Thereby, that is, by this similitude, He leads many astray, from the truth on account of their disbelieving in it, and thereby He guides many, believers on account of their belief in it; and thereby He leads none astray except the wicked, those that reject obedience to Him.
Verse 27
Those such as, He has described, break the covenant of God, the contract He made with them in the [revealed] Books to belief in Muhammad (s), after its solemn binding, after it has been confirmed with them, and such as cut what God has commanded should be joined, of belief in the Prophet, of kinship and other matters (an [in the phrase an yūsala, ‘that it be joined’] substitutes for the pronoun [suffixed] in bihi [of the preceding words mā amara Llāhu bihi, ‘that which God has commanded’]); and such as do corruption in the land, by way of their transgressing and impeding faith, they, the ones thus described, shall be the losers, since, they shall end up in the Fire, made everlasting for them.
Verse 28
How do you, people of Mecca, disbelieve in God, when you were dead, semen inside loins, and He gave you life, in the womb and in this world by breathing Spirit into you (the interrogative here is either intended to provoke amazement at their [persistent] unbelief despite the evidence established, or intended as a rebuke); then He shall make you dead, after your terms of life are completed, then He shall give you life, at the Resurrection, then to Him you shall be returned!, after resurrection, whereupon He shall requite you according to your deeds; and He states, as proof of the Resurrection, when they denied it:
Verse 29
He it is Who created for you all that is in the earth, that is, the earth and all that is in it, so that you may benefit from and learn lessons from it; then, after creating the earth, He turned to, that is, He made His object, heaven and levelled them (fa-sawwāhunna: the pronoun [-hunna] refers to ‘heaven’, since, it [heaven] is implicit in the import of the sentence attributed to it [the pronoun]), that is to say, He made them thus, as [He says] in another verse, [fa-qadāhunna] so He determined them [Q. 41:12]) seven heavens and He has knowledge of all things, in their totality and in their individual detail, so do you not then think that the One who has the power to create this to begin with, which is much greater than what you are, also has the power to bring you back [after death]?
Verse 30
And, mention, O Muhammad (s), when your Lord said to the angels, ‘I am appointing on earth a vicegerent’, who shall act as My deputy, by implementing My rulings therein — and this [vicegerent] was Adam; They said, ‘What, will You appoint therein one who will do corruption therein, through disobedience, and shed blood, spilling it through killing, just as the progeny of the jinn did, for they used to inhabit it, but when they became corrupted God sent down the angels against them and they were driven away to islands and into the mountains; while we glorify, continuously, You with praise, that is, “We say Glory and Praise be to You”, and sanctify You?’, that is, ‘We exalt You as transcendent above what does not befit You?; the lām [of laka, ‘You’] is extra, and the sentence [wa-nuqaddisu laka, ‘We sanctify You’] is a circumstantial qualifier, the import being, ‘thus, we are more entitled to be Your vicegerents’); He, exalted be He, said, ‘Assuredly, I know what you know not’, of the benefits of making Adam a vicegerent and of the fact that among his progeny will be the obedient and the transgressor, and justice will prevail between them. They said, ‘God will never create anything more noble in His eyes than us nor more knowledgeable, since we have been created before it and have seen what it has not seen. God then created Adam from the surface of the earth (adīm al-ard [adīm literally means ‘skin’]), taking a handful of all its colours and mixing it with different waters, then made him upright and breathed into him the Spirit and he thus became a living being with senses, after having been inanimate.
Verse 31
And He taught Adam the names, that is, the names of things named, all of them, by placing knowledge of them into his heart; then He presented them, these names, the majority of which concerned intellectual beings, to the angels and said, to them in reproach, ‘Now tell Me, inform Me, the names of these, things named, if you speak truly’, in your claim that I would not create anything more knowledgeable than you, or that you are more deserving of this vicegerency; the response to the conditional sentence is intimated by what precedes it.
Verse 32
They said, ‘Glory be to You!, exalting You above that any should object to You, We know not except what You have taught us. Surely You are (innaka anta emphasises the [preceding suffixed pronoun] kāf) the Knower, Wise’, from whose knowledge and wisdom nothing escapes.
Verse 33
He, exalted be He, said, ‘Adam, tell them, the angels, their names’, all of the things named; so, he named each thing by its appellation and mentioned the wisdom behind its creation; And when he had told them their names He, exalted, said, in rebuke, ‘Did I not tell you that I know the Unseen in the heavens and the earth?, what is unseen in them, And I know what you reveal, what you manifested when you said, ‘What, will You appoint therein …’, and what you were hiding, what you were keeping secret when you were saying that God would not create anything more knowledgeable or more noble in His eyes than us.
Verse 34
And, mention, when We said to the angels, ‘Prostrate yourselves to Adam’, a prostration that is a bow of salutation; so they prostrated themselves, except Iblīs, the father of the jinn, who was among the angels, he refused, to prostrate, and disdained, became proud and said, I am better than he [Q. 7:12]; and so he became one of the disbelievers, according to God’s knowledge.
Verse 35
And We said, ‘Adam, dwell (anta, ‘you’ [of ‘dwell you’] here reiterates the concealed pronoun [of the person of the verb uskun], so that it [wa-zawjuk] may be made a supplement to it); and your wife, Eve (Hawwā’) — who was created from his left rib — in the Garden, and eat thereof, of its food, easefully, of anything without restrictions, where you desire; but do not come near this tree, to eat from it, and this was wheat or a vine or something else, lest you be, become, evildoers’, that is, transgressors.
Verse 36
Then Satan, Iblīs, caused them to slip, he caused them to be removed (fa-azallahumā: a variant reading has fa-azālahumā: he caused them to be away from it) therefrom, that is, from the Garden, when he said to them, ‘Shall I point you to the tree of eternity’ [cf. Q. 20:120], and swore to them by God that he was only giving good advice to them, and so they ate of it; and brought them out of what they were in, of bliss; and We said, ‘Go down, to earth, both of you and all those comprised by your seed; some of you, of your progeny, an enemy to the other, through your wronging one another; and in the earth a dwelling, a place of settlement, shall be yours, and enjoyment, of whatever of its vegetation you may enjoy, for a while’, [until] the time your terms [of life] are concluded.
Verse 37
Thereafter Adam received certain words from his Lord, with which He inspired him (a variant reading [of Ādamu] has accusative Ādama and nominative kalimātu), meaning they [the words] came to him, and these were [those of] the verse Lord, we have wronged ourselves [Q. 7:23], with which he supplicated, and He relented to him, that is, He accepted his repentance; truly He is the Relenting, to His servants, the Merciful, to them.
Verse 38
We said, ‘Go down from it, from the Garden, all together (He has repeated this [phrase qulnā ihbitū] in order to supplement it with), yet (fa-immā: the nūn of the conditional particle in [‘if’] has been assimilated with the extra mā) there shall come to you from Me guidance, a Book and a prophet, and whoever follows My guidance, believing in me and performing deeds in obedience of Me, no fear shall befall them, neither shall they grieve, in the Hereafter, since they will be admitted into Paradise.
Verse 39
As for the disbelievers who deny Our signs, Our Books, those shall be the inhabitants of the Fire, abiding therein’, enduring perpetually, neither perishing nor exiting therefrom.
Verse 40
O Children of Israel, sons of Jacob, remember My favour wherewith I favoured you, that is, your forefathers, saving them from Pharaoh, parting the sea, sending clouds as shelter and other instances, for which you should show gratitude by being obedient to Me; and fulfil My covenant, that which I took from you, that you believe in Muhammad (s), and I shall fulfil your covenant, that which I gave to you, that you shall be rewarded for this with Paradise; and be in awe of Me, fear Me and not anyone else when you have abandoned belief in him [the Prophet].
Verse 41
And believe in what I have revealed, of the Qur’ān, confirming that which is with you, of the Torah, by its agreement with it, in respect to [affirmation of] God’s Oneness and prophethood; and be not the first to disbelieve in it, from among the People of the Scripture, for those who will come after you will depend on you and so you will bear their sins. And do not sell, exchange, My signs, those that relate to the description of Muhammad (s) in your Book; for a small price, for a trivial and temporary affair of this world; that is to say, do not suppress this for fear of losing what you hope to earn from lowly individuals among you; and fear Me, and none other in this matter.
Verse 42
And do not obscure, confuse, the truth, that I have revealed to you, with falsehood, that you fabricate; and do not conceal the truth, the description of Muhammad (s), wittingly, that is, knowing it to be the truth.
Verse 43
And establish prayer, and pay the alms, and bow with those that bow, that is, pray with those who pray, Muhammad (s) and his Companions: this was revealed concerning their religious scholars, who used to say to their kin from among the Muslims, ‘Stay firm upon the religion of Muhammad (s), for it is the truth’.
Verse 44
Will you bid others to piety, to belief in Muhammad (s), and forget yourselves, neglecting yourselves and not bidding them to the same, while you recite the Book?, in which there is the threat of chastisement, if what you do contradicts what you say. Do you not understand? the evil nature of your actions, that you might then repent? (the sentence about ‘forgetting’ constitutes the [syntactical] locus of the interrogative of disavowal).
Verse 45
Seek help, ask for assistance in your affairs, in patience, by restraining the soul in the face of that which it dislikes; and prayer. The singling out of this for mention is a way of emphasising its great importance; in one hadīth, [it is stated], ‘When something bothered the Prophet (s), he would immediately resort to prayer’; it is said that the address here is to the Jews: when greed and desire for leadership became impediments to their faith, they were enjoined to forbearance, which constituted fasting and prayer, since, the former stems from lust and the latter yields humility and negates pride. For it, prayer, is grievous, burdensome, except to the humble, those that are at peace in obedience,
Verse 46
who reckon, who are certain, that they shall meet their Lord, at the Resurrection, and that to Him they are returning, in the Hereafter, where He will reward them.
Verse 47
O Children of Israel, remember My favour wherewith I favoured you, by giving thanks through obedience to Me, and that I have preferred you, your forefathers, above all the worlds, of their time;
Verse 48
and fear, be scared of, the day when no soul for another shall give satisfaction, which is the Day of Resurrection, and no intercession shall be accepted (read either tuqbal or yuqbal) from it, that is, it is not the case that it has power to intercede, for it then to be accepted from it [or rejected, as God says], So now we have no intercessors [Q. 26:100]; nor any compensation, ransom, be taken, neither shall they be helped, to avoid God’s chastisement.
Verse 49
And, remember, when We delivered you, your forefathers: the address here and henceforth directed to those living at the time of the our Prophet, is about how God blessed their forefathers, and is intended to remind them of God’s grace so that they might believe; from the folk of Pharaoh who were visiting you with, that is, making you taste, evil chastisement, of the worst kind (the sentence here is a circumstantial qualifier referring to the person of the pronoun [suffixed] in najjaynākum, ‘We delivered you’); slaughtering your, newly-born, sons: this is explaining what has just been said; and sparing, retaining, your women, [doing so] because of the saying of some of their priests that a child born among the Israelites shall bring about the end of your rule [Pharaoh]; and for you therein, chastisement or deliverance, was a tremendous trial, a test or a grace, from your Lord.
Verse 50
And, remember, when We divided, split in two, for you, on account of you, the sea, such that you were able to cross it and escape from your enemy; and We delivered you, from drowning, and drowned Pharaoh’s folk, his people with him, while you were beholding the sea crashing down on top of them.
Verse 51
And when We appointed for (wā‘adnā or wa‘adnā) Moses forty nights, at the end of which We shall give him the Torah for you to implement, then you took to yourselves the calf, the one which the Samaritan fashioned for you as a god, after him, that is, after he departed for Our appointment, and you were evildoers, for taking it [in worship], because you directed your worship to the wrong place.
Verse 52
Then We pardoned you, erasing your sins, after that, act of worship, so that you might be thankful, for Our favour upon you.
Verse 53
And when We gave to Moses the Scripture, the Torah, and the Criterion (wa’l-furqān is an explicative supplement [of Torah]), that is, the one that discriminates (faraqa) between truth and falsehood and between what is licit and illicit, so that you might be guided, by it away from error.
Verse 54
And when Moses said to his people, those who worshipped the calf, ‘My people, you have done wrong against yourselves by your taking the [golden] calf, for a god; now turn to your Creator, away from that worship [of the calf] and slay one another, that is, let the innocent of you slay the guilty; That, slaughter, will be better for you in your Creator’s sight’, who made it easier for you to accomplish this and sent down a dark cloud over you, so that none of you was able to see the other and show him mercy, such that almost seventy thousand of you were killed; and He will turn to you [relenting], before your [turning in] repentance; truly He is the Relenting, the Merciful.
Verse 55
And when you said, having gone out with Moses to apologise before God for your worship of the calf, and having heard what he had said [to you]; ‘O Moses, we will not believe you till we see God openly’, with our own eyes; and the thunderbolt, the shout, took you, and you died, while you were beholding, what was happening to you.
Verse 56
Then We raised you up, brought you back to life, after you were dead, so that you might be thankful, for this favour of Ours.
Verse 57
And We made the cloud overshadow you, that is, We sheltered you with fine clouds from the heat of the sun while you were in the wilderness; and We sent down, in them [the clouds], upon you manna and quails — which are [respectively, a type of citrus known as] turunjabīn and the quail — and We said: ‘Eat of the good things We have provided for you’, and do not store any of it away, but they were not grateful for this favour and stored the food, and so they were deprived of it; And they did not wrong Us, in this, but themselves they wronged, since the evil consequences [of this] befell them.
Verse 58
And when We said, to them, after they came out of the wilderness, ‘Enter this city, either the Holy House [of Jerusalem] (Bayt al-Maqdis) or Jericho (Arīhā), and eat freely therein wherever you will, plentifully and without any restrictions, and enter it at the gate, its gate, prostrating, bowing, and say, ‘our request is for [an] exoneration’, that is, ‘That we be exonerated from our transgressions’, and We shall forgive (naghfir: a variant reading has one of the two passive forms yughfar or tughfar, ‘[they] will be forgiven’) you your transgressions and We shall give more to those who are virtuous’ — through obedience — in terms of reward.
Verse 59
Then the evildoers, among them, substituted a saying other than that which had been said to them, and said instead, ‘A grain inside a hair’ and entered [the town] dragging themselves on their rears; so We sent down upon the evildoers (the replacement of the second person [of the previous verse] with the overt identification in the third person alladhīna zalamū, ‘the evildoers’, is intended to emphasise the depravity of their action) wrath, a punishment of plague, from the heaven for their wickedness, for deviating from obedience, and within a very short period of time just under seventy thousand of them were dead.
Verse 60
And, mention, when Moses sought water for his people, for they suffered thirst in the wilderness, We said, ‘Strike with your staff the rock, (the one that ran off with his robe, a light cube-like [rock] about the size of a man’s head, made of marble) and he struck it, and there exploded, there burst and gushed forth, from it twelve fountains, equal to the number of tribes, each people, [each] tribe among them, came to know their drinking-place, which they did not share with any of the others. And We said to them, ‘Eat and drink of that which God has provided, and do not be degenerate in the earth, seeking corruption’ (mufsidīn is a circumstantial qualifier emphasising its operator, the subject of the verb [lā ta‘thaw, ‘do not be degenerate’] derived from ‘athiya, meaning afsada, ‘to corrupt’).
Verse 61
And when you said, ‘Moses, we will not endure one sort of food, that is to say, manna and quails; pray to your Lord for us, that He may bring forth for us, something, of (min here is explicative) what the earth produces — green herbs, cucumbers, garlic, lentils, onions’, he, Moses, said, to them, ‘Would you exchange what is better, more noble, that is, do you substitute this, with what is lowlier?’ (the hamza of a-tastabdilūna is for rebuke); they thus refused to change their mind and he [Moses] supplicated to God, and He, exalted be He, said, ‘Go down to a city, whichever city it may be; you shall have, there, what you demanded’ of vegetable produce; And abasement, submissiveness, and wretchedness, that is, the signs of poverty on account of their submissiveness and debasement that always accompany them, even if they be rich, in the same way that a coin never changes its mint; were cast upon them, and they incurred, ended up with God’s wrath; that, that is, that affliction and wrath, was because they used to disbelieve the signs of God and slay prophets, such as Zachariah and John, without right, that is, unjustly; that was because they disobeyed, and they were transgressors, overstepping the bounds in disobedience (here the repetition [dhālik bi-mā ‘asaw wa-kānū ya‘tadūn] is for emphasis).
Verse 62
Surely those who believe, [who believed] before, in the prophets, and those of Jewry, the Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabaeans, a Christian or Jewish sect, whoever, from among them, believes in God and the Last Day, in the time of our Prophet, and performs righteous deeds, according to the Law given to him — their wage, that is, the reward for their deeds, is with their Lord, and no fear shall befall them, neither shall they grieve (the [singular] person of the verbs āmana, ‘believes’, and ‘amila, ‘performs’, takes account of the [singular] form of man, ‘whoever’, but in what comes afterwards [of the plural pronouns] its [plural] meaning [is taken into account]).
Verse 63
And, mention, when We made a covenant with you, your pledge to act according to what is in the Torah, and We, had, raised above you the Mount, which We uprooted from the earth [and placed] above you when you refused to accept it [sc. the Torah], and We said, ‘Take forcefully, seriously and with effort, what We have given you, and remember what is in it, acting in accordance with it, so that you might preserve yourselves’, from the Fire or acts of disobedience.
Verse 64
Then you turned away thereafter, and but for God’s bounty and His mercy towards you, you would have been among the losers [there is no commentary on this verse].
Verse 65
And verily (wa-la-qad: the lām is for oaths) you know that there were those among you who transgressed, violated, the Sabbath, by fishing, when We had forbidden you to do so — these were the inhabitants of Eilat — and We said to them, ‘Be apes, despised!’, rejected, and they became so: they died three days later.
Verse 66
And We made it, this punishment, an exemplary punishment, a lesson to dissuade others from doing what they did; for all the former times and for the latter, that is, for the people of that time or those that came later; and an admonition to such as who fear, God: these are singled out for mention here because they, in contrast to others, are the ones who benefit thereby.
Verse 67
And, mention, when Moses said to his people, when one among them was killed and the killer was not known, and so they asked Moses to pray to God to reveal the killer, which he did; ‘God commands you to sacrifice a cow’. They said, ‘Do you take us in mockery?’, that is, making fun of us when you answer us like this? He said, ‘I take refuge with, I seek defence with, God lest I should be one of the ignorant’, one of those who indulge in mockery.
Verse 68
But when they realised that he was being serious, They said, ‘Pray to your Lord for us, that He may make clear to us what she may be’, its true nature, He, Moses, said, ‘He, God, says she is a cow neither old, nor virgin, that is, young, middling between the two, in terms of age; so do what you have been commanded’, by way of sacrificing it.
Verse 69
They said, ‘Pray to your Lord for us, that He make clear to us what her colour may be’ He said, ‘He says she shall be a golden cow, bright in colour, that is, of a very intense yellow, gladdening to beholders: its beauty will please those that look at it.
Verse 70
They said, ‘Pray to your Lord for us, that He make clear to us what she may be: does it graze freely or is it used in labour?; the cows (that is, the species described in the way mentioned), are all alike to us, because there are many of them and we have not been able to find the one sought after; and if God wills, we shall then be guided’ to it. In one hadīth [it is reported]: ‘Had they not uttered the proviso [inshā’a Llāh], it would never have been made clear to them’.
Verse 71
He said, ‘He says she shall be a cow not broken, not subdued for labour, that is, to plough the earth, churning its soil for sowing (tuthīr al-ard: the clause describes the word dhalūl, and constitutes part of the negation); or to water the tillage, that is, the land prepared for sowing; one safe, from faults and the effects of toil; with no blemish, of a colour other than her own, on her’. They said, ‘Now you have brought the truth’, that is, [now] you have explained it clearly; they thus sought it out and found it with a boy very dutiful towards his mother, and they eventually purchased it for the equivalent of its weight in gold; and so they sacrificed her, even though they very nearly did not, on account of its excessive cost. In a hadīth [it is stated that], ‘Had they sacrificed any cow, it would have sufficed them, but they made it difficult for themselves and so God made it difficult for them’.
Verse 72
And when you killed a living soul, and disputed thereon (iddāra’tum: the tā’ [of the root-form itdāra’tum] has been assimilated with the dāl) — and God disclosed what you were hiding (this is a parenthetical statement; the story begins here [with wa-idh qataltum nafsan, ‘and when you killed a soul’… and continues in the following]):
Verse 73
so We said, ‘Smite him, the slain man, with part of it’, and so when he was struck with its tongue or its tail, he came back to life and said, ‘So-and-so killed me’, and after pointing out two of his cousins, he died; the two [killers] were denied the inheritance and were later killed. God says: even so, is the revival, for, God brings to life the dead, and He shows you His signs, the proofs of His power, so that you might understand, [that you might] reflect and realise that the One capable of reviving a single soul is also capable of reviving a multitude of souls, and then believe.
Verse 74
Then your hearts became hardened, O you Jews, they [your hearts] became stiffened against acceptance of the truth, thereafter, that is, after what is mentioned of the bringing back to life of the slain man and the other signs before this; and they are like stones, in their hardness, or even yet harder, than these; for there are stones from which rivers come gushing, and others split (yashshaqqaq: the initial tā’ [of the root-form yatashaqqaq] has been assimilated with the shīn), so that water issues from them; and others come down, from on high, in fear of God, while your hearts are unmoved, unstirred and not humbled; And God is not heedless of what you do, but instead, He gives you respite until your time comes (ta‘malūna, ‘you do’: a variant reading has ya‘malūna, ‘they do’, indicating a shift to the third person address).