Tafsir Al Jalalayn - English — Fatir 35:1 – Al-Jathiyah 45:37

Praise be to God, God praises Himself with in these [terms], as explained at the beginning of [the preceding] sūrat Saba’, Originator of the heavens and the earth, the One Who created them without any precedent, Appointer of the angels as messengers, to [His] prophets, having wings in [sets of] two or three or four. He multiplies in creation, in angels and other [creatures], what He will. Surely God has power over all things.

Whatever mercy God unfolds for mankind, in the way of provision or rain, none can withhold it; and whatever He withholds, thereof, none can release it after Him, that is, after His withholding it. And He is the Mighty, Whose way prevails, the Wise, in what He does.

O people, that is, the people of Mecca, remember God’s grace to you, in His making you dwell within the [Meccan] Sanctuary and preventing raids against you. Is there any creator (min khāliqin: min is extra; khāliq is the subject) other than God (read ghayru’Llāhi or gharyri’Llāhi, as an adjectival qualification of khāliq, ‘creator’, either concording with the [oblique] form [of min khāliqin] or concording with the syntactical status [thereof]; the predicate of the subject [is the following]) who provides for you from the heaven, rain, and, from the, earth?, vegetation (the interrogative is [actually] an affirmative, that is to say, ‘there is no creator or provider other than Him). There is no god except Him. So how then do you deviate?, how are you turned away from affirming His Oneness when you already affirm that He is the Creator and the Provider?

And if they deny you, O Muhammad (s), with regard to your coming with [the message of] God’s Oneness, resurrection, reckoning and punishment, verily [other] messengers before you were denied, in this respect, so be steadfast as they were steadfast; and to God all matters are returned, in the Hereafter, when He will requite the deniers and grant victory to the messengers.

O mankind! Indeed God’s promise, of resurrection and of other issues, is true. So do not let the life of this world deceive you, from believing in [all of] that, and do not let the Deceiver, Satan, deceive you concerning God, on account of His forbearance and respiting [of sinners in this life].

Truly Satan is an enemy to you. So treat him as an enemy, by being obedient to God and do not obey him; he only summons his faction, his followers in disbelief, so that they may be among the inhabitants of the Blaze, the fierce Fire.

Those who disbelieve, theirs will be a severe chastisement; but those who believe and perform righteous deeds, theirs will be forgiveness and a great reward — this is a declaration of what [fate] will be for the adherents of Satan and what will be for his opponents [respectively].

The following was revealed regarding Abū Jahl and others: Is he, the evil of whose deeds is made [to seem] fair to him, by distortion, so that he deems it good […]? (a-fa-man, ‘is he [whose]’ constitutes the subject, the predicate of which is [an omitted] ‘like one whom God has guided?’ No! And this [predicate] is indicated by [what follows]). Indeed God leads astray whomever He will and guides whomever He will. So do not let your soul expire for their sake, for those to whom it has made [to seem] fair, out of sighings, by becoming anguished lest they do not believe. Indeed God is Knower of what they do, and He will requite them for it.

And it is God Who unleashes the winds (al-riyāha: a variant reading has al-rīha) and they raise clouds (fa-tuthīru’l-sahāba: the imperfect tense here is used to narrate the past), that is, they stir them up, then We drive them (there is a shift here from the third person [to the first person] address) to a dead land (read mayyitin or maytin), wherein is no plant life, and therewith revive the earth, of that land, after it has been dead, [after] its having been dried-out. In other words, We made seeds and grass grow in it: Such will be the Raising, that is, the Resurrection and the bringing [of the dead] back to life.

Whoever desires glory [should know that] all glory belongs to God, in this world and in the Hereafter, and it cannot be obtained from Him except through obedience to Him, so let such [a one] be obedient to Him. To Him ascends good words, that is to say, He is aware of such [good words], and these are [statements such as] ‘there is no god except God’ and the like; and as for righteous action, He exalts it, He accepts it; but those who plot evil, schemes against the Prophet — [as was the case] at the council assembly, in the way of imprisoning him, killing him or expelling him, as mentioned in [sūrat] al-Anfāl [Q. 8:30] — theirs shall be a severe chastisement and their plotting shall come to nothing: it shall be ruined.

And God created you from dust, by having created your father Adam from it, then from a drop of [seminal] fluid, in other words, from sperm, by creating his seed from it; then He made you pairs, males and females. And no female bears or brings forth except with His knowledge (illā bi-‘ilmihi is a circumstantial qualifier, in other words, ‘[except] that it is known by Him’) and no long-living person is given long life, in other words, the life of none is increased for one who has a long life, nor is anything diminished of his life, in other words, [of the life of] that same long-living person or some other long-living person, but it is [recorded] in a Book, namely, the Preserved Tablet. Surely that is easy for God.

Nor are the two [kinds of] seas alike: this one is extremely sweet, pleasant to drink and that one is salty, extremely bitter. Yet from each, of the two, you eat fresh meat, namely, fish, and obtain, from the salt — and it is also said, from both of them — ornaments which you wear, namely, pearls and coral. And you see, you sight, the ships therein, in each of the two [seas], ploughing through (mawākhira, in other words, tamkhuru’l-mā’a, meaning, ‘it cleaves it as it makes its way through it, coming and going by the same wind) that you may seek of His bounty, exalted be He, through commerce, and that perhaps you may give thanks, to God for this [bounty].

He, God, makes the night pass, enter, into the day, so that it becomes longer, and He makes the day pass into the night, so that it becomes longer, and He has disposed the sun and the moon, each, of them, moving, in its course, to an appointed term — [to] the Day of Resurrection. That is God, your Lord; to Him belongs [all] sovereignty. As for those on whom you call, [whom] you worship, besides Him, in other words, other than Him — and they are the idols — they do not possess [even] so much as the husk of a date-stone.

If you call on them, they will not hear your call, and [even] if they heard —hypothetically [speaking] — they would not [be able to] respond to you; and on the Day of Resurrection they will disown your [idolatrous] associations, in other words, your associating them with God [in power], that is to say, they will declare themselves innocent of you and of your worship of them. And none can inform you, about the state in the two abodes, like One Who is Aware, Knower, and this is God, exalted be He.

O mankind! You are the ones who are in need of God, in every state. And God, He is the Independent, [without any need] of His creatures, the Praised, the One Who is praised in whatever He does with them.

If He will, He can take you away and bring about a new creation, instead of you.

And that is not an arduous thing for God.

And no burdened soul shall bear the burden of another [sinful soul]. And should one, soul, burdened heavily, with sin, call for, some of, its burden to be borne, by another, nothing of it will be borne, even if, the one called, be a relative, kin, such as a father or a son — the impossibility of ‘having something borne [by another]’ in both instances is something ordained by God. You can only warn those who fear their Lord in secret, in other words, those who fear Him despite not having seen Him, for they are the ones to benefit from the warning, and observe the prayer, maintain [performance of] it. For whoever purifies himself, cleansing himself of idolatry and other [similar abominations], is purifying himself only for [the sake of] his own soul, because the reforming of his self pertains to him. And to God is the [end of the] journeying, the return in the Hereafter when He will requite according to deeds.

Nor are the blind and the seer equal, that is, the disbeliever and the believer [are not equal],

nor darkness — disbelief — and light — faith;

nor shade and torrid heat, namely, Paradise and the Fire;

nor are the living equal to the dead, the believers and the disbelievers [respectively] (the addition of the particle lā, ‘nor’, in all three instances is for emphasis). Indeed God makes to hear whomever He will, to be guided, so that such [a person] then responds to Him by embracing faith. But you cannot make those who are in the graves to hear, namely, the disbelievers — whom He has likened to the dead — [to hear] and so respond.

You are but a warner, to them.

Truly We have sent you with the truth, with [right] guidance, as a bearer of good tidings, to him who responds to it, and a warner, to him who does not respond to it. And there is not a community but there has passed, there has been, in it a warner, a prophet to warn it.

And if they, that is, the people of Meccans, deny you, those before them also denied: their messengers brought them manifest signs, miracles, and with scriptures, such as the scrolls of Abraham, and with the illuminating Book, namely, the Torah and the Gospel, so endure [patiently] as they endured.

Then I seized those who disbelieved, for their denial, and how was My abhorrence!, [how was] My rebuttal against them by way of punishment and destruction, in other words, it was appropriate.

Have you not seen, [have you not] realised, that God sends down water from the heaven, wherewith We bring forth (there is here a shift from the third person [to the first person] address) fruits of diverse hues, such as green, red, and yellow [fruits] and so on? And in the mountains are streaks (judad is the plural of judda, which is a mountain trail or the like) white and red, and yellow, of diverse hues, some intense and some pale, and [others] pitch-black? (gharābību sūd is a supplement to judadun, ‘streaks’, meaning, dark-black rocks: one commonly says aswad ghirbīb, but rarely ghirbīb aswad).

And of humans and beasts and cattle, there are diverse hues likewise, like the diversity of the [hues of] fruits and mountains. Indeed only those of God’s servants who have knowledge fear Him, in contrast to the ignorant, such as the disbelievers of Mecca. Truly God is Mighty, in His kingdom, Forgiving, of the sins of His faithful servants.

Indeed those who recite the Book of God and observe prayer, they maintain [performance of] it, and expend of what We have provided them secretly and openly, [to give] as alms and otherwise, anticipate a commerce that will never be ruined,

that He may pay them in full their rewards, the reward for their mentioned deeds, and enrich them out of His bounty. Truly He is Forgiving, of their sins, Appreciative, of their obedience.

And that which We have revealed to you of the Book, the Qur’ān, is the truth, confirming what was [revealed] before it, in other words, [confirming] the Books that came before it. Indeed, with regard to His servants, God is truly Aware and Seeing, knowing [both their] inward and outward aspects.

Then We gave the Book, the Qur’ān, to those of Our servants whom We chose, namely, your community. Yet some of them are those who wrong themselves, by failing to act fully in accordance with it, and some of them are moderate, acting in accordance with it most of the time, and some are those who take the lead in [performing] good works, so that in addition to his [acquiring] knowledge he disseminates it and shows [others] the way [to proper conduct] as well as acting in accordance [with the Qur’ān], by the leave of God, by His will. That, bequest to them of the Book, is the greatest favour!

Gardens of Eden, as a [permanent] residence, into which they will be admitted, the three [types of servants mentioned] (read active yadkhulūnahā, ‘they will enter it’, or passive yudkhalūnahā, ‘into which they will be admitted’, as the predicate of the subject jannāt, ‘gardens’) — therein they will be adorned (yuhallawna is a second predicate) with, some, bracelets of gold and pearls, studded with gold, and their garments therein will be of silk.

And they will say, ‘Praise be to God Who has removed, all, grief from us. Truly our Lord is Forgiving, of sins, Appreciative, of obedience,

Who out of His favour has made us to dwell in the Abode of [everlasting] Stay, wherein no toil shall touch us, nor shall we be touched by any fatigue’, lack of strength caused by exhaustion, [and this is] because [religious] obligations no longer apply therein (the second of these [‘fatigue’], which is consequent upon the first [‘toil’], is mentioned in order to make explicit the non-existence [of any toil in Paradise]).

And as for those who disbelieve, there will be for them the fire of Hell: they will neither be done away with, through death, so that they may die, and find rest, nor will any [aspect] of its chastisement be lightened for them, [not even for] a single moment. In this way, in the way that We requite these, We requite every ingrate, [every] disbeliever (read yujzā kullu kafūrin, ‘every ingrate is [so] requited’; or najzī kulla kafūrin, ‘[so] We requite every ingrate’).

While therein they will be crying out, calling for help in distress, howling and saying: ‘Our Lord! Bring us forth, from it, and we will act righteously, other than how we used to act’. But it will be said to them: ‘Did We not give you long life, enough, time, in which to take heed, for him who would take heed? And [moreover] the warner, the Messenger, came to you, but you did not respond to his call, so taste now [this chastisement]! For the evildoers, the disbelievers, have no helper’, to ward off from them the chastisement.

Truly God is Knower of the Unseen of the heavens and the earth; truly He knows well what is in the breasts, what is in the hearts — thus there is all the more reason that He should [also] have knowledge of other things, given the way people are.

It is He Who made you successors in the earth (khalā’if, ‘successors’, is the plural of khalīfa) in other words, one succeeding the other. So whoever disbelieves, of you, his disbelief will be to his own detriment, that is, the evil consequences of his disbelief [will be so]. And their disbelief does not increase the disbelievers with their Lord [in anything] except disfavour, wrath. And their disbelief does not increase the disbelievers [in anything] except loss, of [the reward of] the Hereafter.

Say: ‘Have you considered your associates on whom you call, [those whom] you worship, besides God?, in other words, other than God — and they are the idols whom you asserted to be partners of God, exalted be He. Show me, apprise me of, what [part] of the earth they have created. Or do they have some partnership, some share alongside God, in, the creation of, the heavens?’ Or have We given them a scripture, so that they are [acting] upon a clear proof, a definitive argument, therefrom?, to the effect that they have some partnership with Me? Nothing of the sort! Nay, but the evildoers, the disbelievers, promise one another nothing but delusion, falsehood, when they say that the idols will intercede for them.

Truly God sustains the heavens and the earth lest they disappear, in other words, He prevents them from disappearing. And if (wa-la-in: the lām is for oaths) they were to disappear there is none that can sustain them after Him, in other words, other than Him. Truly He is ever Forbearing, Forgiving, in deferring the punishment of the disbelievers.

And they, that is, the disbelievers of Mecca, swore by God their most solemn oaths, [they swore] with utmost effort [to be sincere] in them, that if a warner, a messenger, were to come to them, they would be more readily guided than any one of the communities, [than] the Jews, the Christians or others, in other words, [more readily guided] than any one of these — having [themselves] seen the extent to which these [groups] called each other liars, given that: The Jews say, ‘The Christians stand on nothing’, and the Christians say, ‘The Jews stand on nothing’, [Q. 2:113]. But when a warner, namely, Muhammad (s), did come to them, this, coming of his, only increased them in aversion, further away from [right] guidance,

acting with disdain in the land, against faith (istikbāran fī’l-ardi, an object denoting reason) and devising, acts of, evil, in the way of idolatry and otherwise; and evil schemes will beset, surround, only their authors, namely, the one who devises [such evil] (the qualifying of makr, ‘scheme’, with the noun al-sayyi’, ‘evil’, is intrinsic [to the fact that it is a scheme], and so the annexation of the former to the latter is said to be alternative usage in which the annexed term is implied, as a precaution against annexing a noun to an adjective). So do they expect, do they await, anything but the precedent of the ancients?, God’s way [of dealing] with them, such as chastising them for their denial of the messengers? Yet you will never find any change in God’s precedent, and you will never find any revision in God’s precedent, that is to say, chastisement is never replaced by anything else, nor is it ever meted out other than to the one who deserves it.

Have they not travelled in the land and seen the nature of the consequence for those who were before them — and they were mightier than these in power?, but [still] God destroyed them for their denial of the messengers. And God is not such that anything in the heavens or in the earth can escape Him, pre-empt Him or elude Him. Truly He is ever Knower, of all things, Omnipotent.

Were God to take mankind to task for what they have acquired, of acts of disobedience, He would not leave on its surface, that is, the earth’s, a single creature, a single living thing moving thereon. But He reprieves them to an appointed term, namely, [to] the Day of Resurrection. And when their term comes — then truly [they will know that] God is ever Seer of His servants, and so He will requite them according to [the nature of] their deeds, rewarding the believers and punishing the disbelievers.

Yā sīn: God knows best what He means by these [letters].

By the Definitive Qur’ān, made definitive by its marvellous arrangement and unique meanings,

you, O Muhammad (s), are indeed of those sent [by God],

on a (‘alā is semantically connected to the preceding [statement]) straight path, that is, [you follow] the way of the prophets before you, [enjoining] the affirmation of God’s Oneness and guidance (the emphasis expressed by the oath [in ‘by the definitive Qur’ān’] and the remainder [of the statement] is a response to the disbelievers’ saying to him, ‘You have not been sent [by God]!’ [Q. 13:43].

A revelation from the Mighty, in His kingdom, the Merciful, to His creatures (tanzīla’l-‘azīzi’l-rahīm is the predicate of an implicit subject, namely, al-qur’ān),

that you may warn, therewith, a people (qawman, connected to tanzīla, ‘a revelation’) whose fathers were not warned, in the period of the interval (al-fatra), so they, this people, are oblivious, to faith and right guidance.

The word, for chastisement, has already proved true, it has become due, for most of them, for they, in other words, most of them, will not believe.

Indeed We have put fetters around their necks, to bind to them their hands (because ghull [is a fetter that] shackles the hands to the neck), such that they, the hands, are, bound, up to the chins (adhqān is the plural of dhaqan, which is where the two sides of the beard meet) so that their heads are upturned, they are unable to lower them: this [statement] is figurative and is meant to indicate their inability to yield to faith or to lower their heads to it.

And We have set before them a barrier (read saddan or suddan in both instances) and behind them a barrier; so We have covered them, so they do not see — this is also figurative, depicting the way in which the paths of faith are closed to them.

And it is the same to them whether you warn them (read a-andhartuhum, pronouncing both hamzas; or by substituting an alif for the second one; or by not pronouncing the second one but inserting an alif between the one not pronounced and the other one, or without [the insertion]) or do not warn them, they will not believe.

You can only warn, in other words, your warning will only benefit, him who follows the Remembrance, the Qur’ān, and fears the Compassionate One in secret, who fears Him despite not having seen Him; so give him the good tidings of forgiveness and a noble reward, namely, Paradise.

Truly it is We Who bring the dead to life, for the resurrection, and record, in the Preserved Tablet, what they have sent ahead, during their lives, of good or evil, that they may be requited for it, and their vestiges, what conduct was followed after them as good practice. And everything (kulla shay’in is in the accusative because of the verb that governs it [and is the following]) We have numbered, We have recorded precisely, in a clear register, a clear Book, namely, the Preserved Tablet.

And strike for them as a similitude (mathalan is the first direct object) the inhabitants (ashāba is the second direct object) of the town, [of] Antioch (Antākya), when the messengers, namely, Jesus’s disciples, came to it (idh jā’ahā’l-mursalūna is an inclusive substitution for ashāba’l-qaryati, ‘the inhabitants of the town’).

When We sent to them two men, and they denied them both (from idh arsalnā ilayhim ithnayni fa-kadhdhabūhumā to the end is a substitution for the previous idh, ‘when’), so We reinforced [them] (read fa-‘azaznā or fa-‘azzaznā, in other words, We reinforced the two men) with a third, and they said, ‘We have indeed been sent to you [by God]’.

They said, ‘You are nothing but humans like us, and the Compassionate One has revealed nothing. You are only lying!’

They said, ‘Our Lord knows (qālū rabbunā ya‘lamu functions like an oath. Emphasis is intensified by this [oath] and also by the [addition of the] lām to what was before [simply, mursalūna, ‘we have been sent’] to counter their intensified denial) that we have indeed been sent to you [by Him]!

And our duty is only to communicate in clear terms’, to deliver the Message clearly and manifestly with plain proofs, such as the curing of the blind, the leper and the diseased and the bringing of the dead back to life.

They said, ‘We augur ill of you, for we have been deprived of rain because of you. If (la-in: the lām is for oaths) you do not desist, we will surely stone you and there shall befall you, at our hands, a painful chastisement’.

They said, ‘May your augury of ill be with you!, [as punishment] for your disbelief. What! [Even] if (a-in: the interrogative hamza has been added to the conditional in, ‘if’, the hamza may be pronounced or elided, but in both cases add an alif between it and the other one) [it be that] you are being reminded?, [even if] you are being admonished and made to fear [God’s chastisement]? (the response to the conditional has been omitted, that is to say, ‘do you augur ill and disbelieve [even if it be that you are being admonished]?’ and this [response] constitutes the object of the interrogative, which is meant [rhetorically] as a rebuke). Nay, but you are a profligate people!’, who transgressing the bounds [set by God] with your [practice of] idolatry.

And there came a man from the furthest part of the city — this was Habīb the carpenter, who had believed in these messengers and whose house lay at the far end of the city — hastening, with a hurried pace, after he had heard that the people had denied the messengers. He said, ‘O my people, follow the messengers!

Follow (ittabi‘ū, this reiterates the preceding [ittabi‘ū]) them who do not ask you for any reward, in return for [delivering to you] the message, and who are rightly guided. And so he was asked, ‘Do you follow their religion?’ So he replied:

And why should I not worship Him Who originated me, [Him Who] created me — in other words: there is nothing to prevent me from worshipping Him when the necessitating factors for this exist, and the same applies to you — and to Whom you shall be returned?, after death, whereupon He will requite you for your disbelief.

Shall I take (a-attakhidu: regarding the two hamzas here, the same applies as mentioned with regard to a-andhartuhum above; this is an interrogative meant as a denial) besides Him, in other words, other than Him, [other] gods, idols, whose intercession, [that intercession of theirs] which you assert, if the Compassionate One should wish me any harm, will not avail me in any way, nor will they [be able to] save me? (wa-lā yunqidhūn is an adjectival qualification of ālihatan, ‘gods’).

Truly then, in other words, in the case of me worshipping [gods] other than God, I would be in manifest error.

Lo! I believe in your Lord. So listen to me!’, in other words, hear what I have to say; but they stoned him and he died.

It was said, to him upon his death: ‘Enter Paradise!’ — but it is also said that he entered it while he was [still] alive. He said, ‘O (yā is for calling attention [to something]), would that my people knew

with what [munificence] my Lord has forgiven me, [would that they knew] of His great forgiveness, and made me of the honoured ones!’

And We did not send (mā here is for negation) down on his people, namely, Habīb’s, after him, after his death, any host from the heaven, that is, any angels to destroy them, nor do We [ever] send down, any angels to destroy anyone.

It, their punishment, was but one Cry — Gabriel gave a cry to them — and lo! they were extinguished, silent, dead.

Ah, the anguish for servants, [such as] these and their like from among those who denied the messengers and were destroyed (this [word, hasra] denotes ‘extreme agony’; the vocative here is being used metaphorically, in other words, ‘It is time for you [O anguish], so come now!’). Never did a messenger come to them but that they mocked him (this [statement] is given as an explanation of the cause thereof [of the ‘agony’] since it [the statement] entails their mockery which itself results in their being destroyed and which in turn is the cause of the ‘anguish’).

Have they — that is, those inhabitants of Mecca who said to the Prophet, ‘You have not been sent [by God]!’ [Q. 13:43] — not seen, [not] come to know (the interrogative is meant [rhetorically] as an affirmative) how many (kam here is predicative [as opposed to interrogative], in other words [it is to be understood as] kathīran, ‘many’; it is operated by the statement that comes next [below] and it comments on the operative clause for the statement that preceded it); the meaning then is as follows: indeed, many, generations, communities, We have destroyed before them, [how] that they, the ones destroyed, never return?, to those deniers [who are now alive]? So will they not learn from their example? (from annahum, ‘[how] that they’, to the end [of the verse] is a substitution for the preceding clause [kam ahlaknā qablahum mina’l-qurūni], bearing in mind the aforementioned general meaning).

And indeed (in, is either for negation or is in its softened form) every one of them, that is, every single creature (kullun is the subject) will be gathered (jamī‘un is the predicate of the subject) before Us, at the Scene, following their resurrection, arraigned (muhdarūna is a second predicate) for the Reckoning (read lammā with the sense of illā, or lamā with the lām functioning as a separator and the mā being extra).

And a sign for them, of the [truth of] resurrection (wa-āyatun lahum is a preceding predicate) is the dead earth (read maytatu or mayyitatu) which We revive, with water (ahyaynāhā is the subject) and out of which We bring forth grain, such as wheat, so that they eat thereof;

and We have placed therein gardens, orchards, of date-palms and vines, and We have caused, a number of, springs to gush forth therein,

that they might eat of its fruits (read thamarihi or thumurihi) in other words, [of] the fruits of the mentioned date-palms and otherwise; but it was not their hands that made it, namely, they did not cultivate the fruits. Will they not then give thanks?, for His favours to them, exalted be He?

Glory be to Him Who created all the pairs, the specimens, of what the earth produces, of seeds and other things, and of themselves, of males and females, and of what they do not know, of marvellous and strange creatures.

And a sign for them, of the tremendous power [of God], is the night, from which We strip, We separate, the day and, behold, they find themselves in darkness, passing into the darkness [of the night].

And the sun [which] runs (from wa’l-shamsu tajrī to the end [of the statement] is subsumed by [the introductory] wa-āyatun lahum, ‘and a sign for them’; alternatively, it constitutes another sign [for them]; similar is the case with wa’l-qamara, ‘and the moon’ [further below]) to its resting-place, in other words, it does not overstep it. That, namely, its running, is the ordaining of the Mighty, in His kingdom, the Knower, of His creation.

And the moon — (read wa’l-qamaru, in the nominative, or wa’l-qamara, in the accusative; and it may be in the accusative because of a following verb that governs it) We have determined it, with respect to its course, [to run] in phases — twenty eight phases in twenty eight nights of every month; it becomes concealed for two nights when the month has thirty days, and for one night when it has twenty nine days — until it returns, during its final phase seeming to the [human] eye, like an aged palm-bough, in other words, like the stalk with a date cluster when it ages, becoming delicate, arched and yellowish.

It does not behove — it is [neither] facilitated nor is it right for — the sun to catch up with the moon, and so appear together with it at night, nor may the night outrun the day, and thus it [the night] never arrives before the latter ends and each (kullun: the nunation compensates for the [missing] genitive annexation [that would have been constructed] with al-shams, ‘the sun’, al-qamar, ‘the moon’, and al-nujūm, ‘the stars’) [of these] is in an orbit, swimming, moving — these [celestial bodies] are being treated as [though they were] rational beings.

And a sign for them, of Our power, is that We carried their seed (dhurriyatahum: a variant reading has dhurriyyātihim), that is to say, their original ancestors, in the laden Ark, that is, Noah’s fully-loaded ship,

and We have created for them the like of it, that is, the like of Noah’s Ark, namely, the small and large ships resembling it which they have made, by the instruction of God, exalted be He, in which they ride.

And if We will, We drown them, despite the existence of ships [for them to ride safely in], whereat they have no one to call to, [none] to succour [them], nor are they rescued, delivered —

except by a mercy from Us and for an enjoyment until some time, in other words, they can only be saved by Our showing them mercy and Our permitting them to enjoy those pleasures of theirs until their terms [of life] are concluded.

And when it is said to them, ‘Beware of that which is before you, of the chastisement of this world, as [it is said] to others, and that which is behind you, of the chastisement of the Hereafter, that perhaps you might find mercy’, they turn away [in aversion].

And never did a sign of the signs of their Lord come to them, but that they turned away from it.

And when it is said, that is, [when] the poor ones from among the Companions [of the Prophet] say, to them: ‘Expend, on us, of what God has provided you’, of wealth, those who disbelieve say to those who believe, in mockery of them: ‘Are we to feed those whom, if God willed, He would feed?, as you are wont to believe? You, in saying this to us, together with this believe of yours, are only in manifest error!’ — as an explicit declaration of their disbelief this [statement] is very effective [in the way that it has been expressed].

And they say, ‘When will this promise, of resurrection, be [fulfilled], if you are being truthful?’, therein.

God, exalted be He, says: They await but a single Cry, namely [the cry of] Isrāfīl’s First Blast, that will seize them while they are disputing (read yakhassimūna, which is actually yakhtasimūna, where the vowel of the tā’ has been moved to the khā’ and it [the tā’] has been assimilated with the sād, in other words: while they are oblivious to it, busily engaged in disputes, concluding bargains, eating and drinking and so on; a variant reading has yakhsimūna similar [in pattern] to yadribūna, in which case the meaning is: while they dispute with one another).

Then they will not be able to make any testament, that is, to make a bequest, nor will they return to their folk, from their markets and their businesses, rather they will die then and there.

And the Trumpet is blown — this is the Horn — at the second Blast for the Resurrection [to take place]; between the two Blasts is an interval of forty years; and lo! they, those interred, will be scrambling out of their graves towards their Lord, emerging therefrom hurriedly.

They, the disbelievers among them, will say, ‘O (yā is for calling attention [to something]) woe to us! (waylanā means halākanā, ‘[O] our destruction!’, and it is a verbal noun which has no [regular] verbal conjugation) Who has raised us from our place of sleep?, [they say this] because they will have been asleep in the interval between the two blasts and will not have been punished [yet]. This, that is, [this] raising, is that which the Compassionate One had promised and, regarding which, the messengers had spoken the truth’: they affirm [this truth] when such affirmation is no longer of any benefit to them — but it is also said that this is said to them.

It is but a single Cry, and, behold, they will all be arraigned before Us!

So today no soul shall be wronged in any way, and you shall not be requited, except, the requital of, what you used to do.

Indeed today the inhabitants of Paradise are busy (read fī shughlin or fī shughulin), [oblivious] to what the inhabitants of the Fire are suffering, [busy] delighting in pleasures such as deflowering virgins — not busy with anything wearisome, as there is no toil in Paradise — rejoicing, blissful (fākihūna is a second predicate of inna, the first being fī shugulin, ‘busy’);

they (hum, the subject) and their spouses, beneath the shade (zilāl is the plural of zulla or zill, and is the predicate) in other words, no [blinding] sunlight affects them, reclining upon (muttaki’ūna is a second predicate, connected to ‘alā, ‘upon’) couches (arā’ik is the plural of arīka, which is a bed inside a curtained canopy, or the bedding therein).

They have fruits therein and, therein, they have whatever they call for, [whatever] they wish for.

“Peace!” (salāmun is a subject) — the word (qawlan is its predicate), that is, [peace] by way of a word, from a Lord [Who is] Merciful, to them, in other words, He says to them, ‘Peace be on you!’

And, He says: ‘Stand apart, O you sinners, on this day!, in other words, separate yourselves from the believers — [said to them] upon their mingling with the latter.

Did I not charge you, command you, O children of Adam, by the tongues of My messengers, that you should not worship Satan, [that you should] not obey him; truly he is a manifest enemy to you, one whose enmity is evident,

and that [you should] worship Me, [and that you should] affirm My Oneness and obey Me — that is the straight path?

For verily he has led astray from among you many a creature (jibillan is the plural of jabīl, similar [in pattern] to qadīm, ‘old’; a variant reading has jubulan). Did you not use to comprehend?, his enmity and his misguidance, or the chastisements that befell them and so believe? And it will be said to them in the Hereafter:

This is Hell, which you were promised!

Burn therein today [as chastisement] for that which you used to reject!’

Today We shall seal up their mouths, namely, [the mouths of] the disbelievers for their saying: By God, our Lord, we were never idolaters!’ [Q. 6:23]; and their hands shall speak to Us, and their feet shall bear witness, as will other [parts of their bodies] concerning what they used to earn, and so each limb will speak of that [sinful action] which issued from it.

And had We willed We would have obliterated their eyesight, We would have rendered them blind by obliterating them, then, they [would have tried to] advance towards the path, to be on their way as usual, but how would they have seen?, then. In other words, they would not have been to see.

And had We willed We would have transformed them, [into] apes or swine or stones, in their place (makānatihim, variant reading has makānātihim, the plural of makāna, meaning makān, in other words ‘in their dwellings’); then they would have neither been able to go ahead nor to return, in other words, they would not then be able to come and go.

And whomever We give long life, by prolonging his term [of life], We cause him to regress (nankushu; a variant reading has [2nd verbal form] nunakkishu, derived from al-tankīs) in creation, that is, in terms of his physical form, so that after having enjoyed strength and youth, he becomes feeble and decrepit. Will they then not understand?, that One Who is able to effect such [a state] — with which they are familiar — is also able to resurrect, that they might then become believers? (a variant reading [for ya‘qilūna, ‘they understand’] has [the second person plural] ta‘qilūna, ‘you understand’).

And We did not teach him, that is, the Prophet, poetry — this was [revealed] to refute their saying, ‘This Qur’ān that he has brought is but poetry!’ — nor is it, poetry, seemly, [nor is it] facilitated, for him. It — that which he has brought — is just Remembrance, an admonition, and a Qur’ān that clarifies, that manifests [God’s] rulings and other matters;

that he may warn (li-yundhira; or read li-tundhira, ‘that you may warn’), therewith, whoever is alive, able to comprehend what is being said to him — and such are the believers — and that the Word, of chastisement [from God], may be fulfilled against the disbelievers, who are like the dead, unable to comprehend what is said to them.

Or, have they not seen, have they [not] realised (the interrogative is meant as an affirmative, and the wāw inserted therein [in a-wa-lam] is for supplementation) that We have created for them, and for all human beings, of what Our hands worked, [of] what We have made without any partner or helper, cattle, namely, camels, cows and sheep, so that they are their owners?, masters [controlling them].

And We have subdued, We have disposed, these [cattle] for them, so that some of them provide rides for them and some of them they eat.

And there are other benefits for them therein, such as their wool, fur and hairs, and drinks, [made] from their milk (mashārib is the plural of mashrab meaning shurb, ‘a drink’; or [what is meant is] the place [from which the drink issues]). Will they not then give thanks?, to the One Who has bestowed these graces upon them and so become believers? In other words, they do not do [any of] this.

And they have taken besides God, in other words, other than Him, [other] gods, idols, which they worship, that perhaps they might be helped, protected against God’s chastisement by their gods’ interceding for them, as they are wont to claim.

They, their gods, cannot help them — they are being treated as [though they were] rational beings — and they, their idol gods, are their host, as they claim, their supporters, ever-present, [but] in the Fire, together with them.

So do not be grieved by their remarks, to you, that you have not been sent [by God] and otherwise. Assuredly We know what they conceal and what they proclaim, in this respect and otherwise, and We will requite them accordingly.

Or has man — namely, [the like of] al-‘Āsī b. Wā’il — not seen, [has he not] realised, that We created him from a drop, of sperm [and so on in stages] until We made him powerful and strong. Then lo! he is an open adversary, severely antagonistic towards Us, [openly] making this manifest by his denial of resurrection.

And he strikes for Us a similitude, in this respect, and forgets [the manner of] his creation, from a sperm-drop, a thing more curious than his similitude; he says, ‘Who will revive the bones when they are rot?’, in other words, [when they have become] withered (He does not say ramīmatun, ‘decayed’, because it [ramīmun, ‘rot’] is a noun and not an adjective). It is reported that he [al-‘Āsī] took some withered bones and crushed them into pieces and said to the Prophet (s), ‘Do you think that God can revive these [bones] after they have decayed and become rot?’ And so the Prophet (s) said, ‘Yes indeed! And He will also throw you into the Fire’.

Say: ‘He will revive them Who originated them the first time, and He is Knower of all creation, [of every single] creature, generally and in detail, before and after it has been created —

He Who has made for you, and for all human beings, fire from the green tree, namely, [from] the markh and ‘afār [variety], or [from] all trees, except for the jujube (‘unnāb), and, behold, from it you kindle’, [from it] you strike fire: this is proof of the power [of God] to resurrect, for in this [example of the green tree] He has combined [the elements of] water, fire and wood; but neither the water extinguishes the fire, nor does the fire ignite the wood.

Is not He Who created the heavens and the earth, in all their immensity, able to create the like of them?, namely, human beings, in all their minuteness? Yes indeed, He is able to do this — God Himself replies here. And He is the Creator (khallāq means Creator of many things), the Knower, of all things.

His command, His affair, when He wills a thing, that is, [when He will] to create something, is just to say to it ‘Be’, and it is (a variant reading [for fa-yakūnu] has fa-yakūna, as a supplement to yaqūla, ‘to say’).

So glory be to Him in Whose hand is the dominion of all things (malakūt means mulk: the wāw and tā’ have been added for hyperbole) and to Whom you will be returned, restored, in the Hereafter.

By those who are ranged in ranks — [by] the angels who range their souls in worship or their wings in the air awaiting their orders;

and the drivers who drive [away], the angels who drive the clouds;

and those who recite, that is to say, the readers of the Qur’ān, they recite it, by way remembrance (dhikran is a verbal noun referring to [the action of] al-tāliyāt, ‘those who recite’).

Indeed your God, O people of Mecca, is certainly One,

Lord of the heavens and the earth and all that is between them, and Lord of the sun’s risings, that is, as well as the sun’s settings — each day it [the sun] has a rising and a setting.

We have indeed adorned the lowest heaven with an adornment, the stars, that is to say, [adorned] with their light or with them [the stars] (the genitive annexation [bi-zīnati’l-kawākib] is for explication; similarly [explicative] is the reading of bi-zīnatin, ‘with an adornment’, with nunation, [the adornment] explained as being ‘the stars’);

and to guard (wa-hifzan is in the accusative because of an implied verb) that is to say, ‘We have guarded it with meteors’, from every (min kulli is semantically connected to the implied verb) any rebellious devil, who is a transgressor, in rebellion against obedience.

They, namely, the devils (lā yasma‘ūna, this is [the beginning of] a new sentence) cannot listen in — this ‘listening’ of theirs represents that faculty with which they memorise [what they hear] — on the High Council, the angels in the heavens (the [normally transitive verb] al-samā‘ is complemented with the preposition ilā, ‘to’ [here ‘in on’] because it includes the additional sense of ‘paying attention’ [while listening]; a variant reading has yassamma‘una, which is actually yatasamma‘ūna, the tā’ have been assimilated with the sīn), for they, the devils, are pelted, with flames, from every side, from the remotest regions of the heavens,

to repel [them] (duhūran is a verbal noun from daharahu, meaning, ‘he repelled him, driving him away’; it is an object denoting reason) and theirs, in the Hereafter, is an everlasting chastisement;

except him who snatches a fragment (al-khatfa is the verbal noun, that is to say, ‘[that] one time’; the exceptive clause refers to the subject [of the verb] yasma‘ūna, in other words, ‘the only devil that is able to listen is the one that hears a word from the angels and snatches it away quickly’) and who is then pursued by a piercing flame (shihāb is a meteor) that pierces him, or burns him or robs him of his senses.

So ask them, in other words, inquire of the people of Mecca for affirmation or by way of rebuke: Are they stronger as a creation, or those [others] whom We created?, of angels, heavens, the two earths and all that is in them (the use of man, ‘those whom’ [in man khalaqnā] indicates that the reference is predominantly to [other] rational creatures). Indeed We created them, that is, their origin, Adam, from a viscous clay, that sticks to the hand. The [intended] meaning is that their physical make-up is fragile so let them not behave arrogantly by rejecting the Prophet and the Qur’ān, a fact which will result in their — easily accomplished — destruction.

Nay, but (bal is for effecting a transition from one object to another, which in this case is to inform of his state and theirs) you marvel, (‘ajibta) addressing the Prophet (s), that is, [you marvel] that they deny you, while they engage in ridicule, at your marvelling,

and [even] when they are reminded, [when] they are admonished with the Qur’ān, they are not mindful, they do not heed the admonition,

and when they see a sign, such as the splitting of the moon [cf. Q. 54:1], they make it an object of ridicule, they deride it.

And they say, regarding it: ‘This is nothing but manifest sorcery — and they say in denial of the Resurrection —

When we are dead and have become dust and bones, shall we indeed be resurrected? (In both places [sc. a-idhā and a-innā] either pronounce both hamzas, or read without pronouncing the second one and inserting an alif between them, in both cases).

And our forefathers too?’ (read aw ābā’unā indicating a supplement; or read a-wa-ābā’unā as an interrogative, effecting the supplement with the wāw; so that what is being supplemented is either the inna together with its subject [sc. a-inna la-mab‘ūthūna], or the subject [of the verb] la-mab‘ūthūna, in which case the interrogative hamza is a separator).

Say: ‘Yes, you will be resurrected, and you will be utterly humiliated!’

For it will be only (innamā hiya, this [hiya] is a demonstrative pronoun explained by [the following, zajratun) a single cry and, lo! they, all creatures, will be, alive, watching, [to see] what will be done with them.

And they, the disbelievers, will say, ‘O (yā is for calling attention) woe to us!’, [O] our destruction [is here] (waylanā is a verbal noun without any [regular] verbal conjugation). And the angels will say to them: ‘This is the Day of Retribution’, the Day of Reckoning and Requital.

‘This is the Day of Judgement, between [all] creatures, that you used to deny!’

It is then said to the angels: ‘Gather those who did wrong, to their own souls through idolatry, together with their mates, their associates from among the devils, and what they used to worship,

besides God, in other words, other than Him, in the way of graven images, and lead them, direct them and drive them, to the path of Hell, the way to the Fire.

But [first] stop them, detain them on the path, for they must be questioned, about all their sayings and deeds, and it will be said to them in rebuke:

“What is wrong with you that you do not help one another?”, as was the case with you in this world. And it will be said to them:

Nay, but today they offer complete submission, [they are] compliant, abased.

And some of them will turn to others, questioning each other, blaming one another and disputing.

They, that is, the followers among them, will say, to those whom they followed: ‘Indeed you used to approach us from the right’, in other words, from that aspect in which we used to trust you, for you used to swear that you followed the truth, and so we believed you and we followed you — in other words, ‘Indeed, you have led us astray!’

They, the ones who were followed, say, to them [the followers]: ‘On the contrary! You were [simply] not believers, for it would only be true that we led you astray if you had actually been believers [in the first place] and then rejected faith and followed us.

And we did not have any warrant, any sway or power, over you, to compel you to follow us. Nay, but you [yourselves] were a rebellious folk, astray, like us.

So our Lord’s Words, of chastisement — namely, His Words: ‘Verily I shall fill Hell with jinn and mankind together’ [Q. 11:119] — have become due against us, both. Indeed we shall, both, taste, the chastisement with these Words — which prompts them to say:

So we led you astray — the reason for which is given by their saying — indeed we [ourselves] were astray’.

God, exalted be He, says: So they on that day, the Day of Resurrection, will share in the chastisement, for they shared in the error.

Indeed so, in the same way that We deal with these, We deal with sinners, other than these, in other words, We chastise both of them the followers and those who were followed.

For truly it was they who, in other words, [it was] these [sinners] who — given the context that follows — when it was said to them, ‘There is no god except God’, used to be scornful,

and would say, ‘Are we to abandon our gods for a mad poet?’, that is, for the sake of what Muhammad (s) says? (as regards the hamzas [in a-innā, ‘are we’], the same applies as mentioned above).

God, exalted be He, says: Nay, but he has brought [them] the truth and confirmed the [earlier] messengers, namely, those who had also brought this [truth], which is that there is no god except God.

‘You shall certainly (there is a shift from the third person address [to the second] here) taste the painful chastisement,

and you will only be requited, the requital for, what you used to do’.

Except for God’s sincere servants, namely, the believers (the exception clause here is a discontinuous one),

whose requital is mentioned in His saying: For them there will be, in Paradise, a distinct provision, morning and evening —

fruits (fawākihu either substitutes for rizqun, or is an explication thereof) here these [fruits] represent what is eaten for delight and not for the sake of preserving one’s health [as in this world], for the inhabitants of Paradise are in no need of preserving it given that their bodies will be created to be everlasting — and they will honoured, with God’s reward, glory be to Him, exalted be He,

in the Gardens of Bliss,

[reclining] upon couches, facing one another, so that they do not see the back of one another;

they are served from all round, each one of them [is so served], with a cup (ka’san, [this denotes] the vessel with the drink in it) from a spring, of wine that flows along the ground like streams of water,

white, whiter than milk, delicious to the drinkers, in contrast to the wine of this world which is distasteful to drink,

wherein there is neither madness, nothing to snatch away their minds, nor will they be spent by it (read yunzafūna or yunzifūna, from [1st form] nazafa or [4th form] anzafa, said of one drinking, in other words, they are [not] inebriated [by it], in contrast to the wine of this world),

and with them will be maidens of restrained glances, who reserved their glances [exclusively] for their spouses and do not look upon any other — because of the beauty they [the maidens] see in them — with beautiful eyes (‘īn means with large and beautiful eyes),

as if they were, in terms of [the starkness of their white] colour, hidden eggs, of ostriches, sheltered by their feathers from dust, the colour being that whiteness with a hint of pallor, which is the most beautiful of female complexions.

Some of them, some of the inhabitants of Paradise, will turn to others, questioning each other, regarding what they experienced in the [life of the] world.

One of them will say, ‘Indeed I had a comrade, a companion who used to reject [the idea of] resurrection,

who used to say, to me in reproach, “Are you really among those who affirm as truth, the Resurrection [and],

[that] when we are dead and have become dust and bones, we shall actually be called to account?” ’, that we shall be requited and reckoned with — he rejects [the truth of] this as well (as regards all three instances of the hamzas [sc. a-innaka, a-idhā, and a-innā] what has been mentioned above [applies]).

He, the one speaking, says, to his brethren [in Paradise], ‘Will you have a look?’, together with me into the Fire, to see his condition — but they will say, ‘No’.

Then he, that speaker, will take a look, through one of the apertures in Paradise, and he will catch sight of him, that is, he will see his comrade, in the centre of Hell, in the middle of the Fire.

He will say, to him, acknowledging that he [the latter] deserves his fate: ‘By God! You very nearly destroyed me, you [almost] ruined me through your misguidance (in, this has been softened from the hardened form [inna]).

And had it not been for the favour of my Lord, His grace to me in giving me faith, I [too] would have been of those arraigned’, with you, in the Fire. The inhabitants of Paradise will say:

Do we then not die [anymore],

aside from our first death, that is, the one [which we suffered] in this world, and are we not to be chastised?’ — this interrogative statement is one made out of [sheer] delight and in order to speak [at length] of the graces of God, exalted be He, in [His] granting of everlasting life and refraining from inflicting any punishment.

Truly this, that has mentioned [as being the reward] for the inhabitants of Paradise, is indeed the mighty success.

For the like of this let [all] the workers work — it is said that this is said to them, or it is what they say [themselves].

Is that, which is mentioned to them, a better hospitality (nuzul, denotes what is prepared for one who is being received as a guest and so forth) or the Zaqqūm tree, that is prepared for the inhabitants of the Fire — it is the vilest and most bitter tree of the Tihāma region, which God causes to grow in the Fire, as will be stated shortly.

We have indeed made it, for that reason [sc. its being a tree in the Fire], a trial for the wrongdoers?, namely, [for] the disbelievers of Mecca, for they said, ‘Fire consumes trees so how can it make them grow forth?’

Indeed it is a tree that comes forth from the very source of Hell, in other words, from the depths of Hell, with its branches extending up through all its [different] levels.

Its spathes, likened to the spathes of a date-palm, are like the heads of devils, [as] vile-looking snakes.

And indeed they, the disbelievers, will eat of it, despite its vileness, because of the severity of their hunger, and will fill their bellies from it.

Then, lo!, on top of it they will have a brew of boiling water, which they drink and which mixes with what they have eaten and becomes a brew thereof.

Then indeed their return shall be to Hell-fire — this suggests that they exit from it [only] to drink the boiling water, which is located outside it.

Lo! they found their fathers to be astray,

and so they are [also now] hurrying in their footsteps: they shall be prodded to follow them and they end up hurrying towards it [Hell-fire].

And verily most of the ancients, of past communities, went astray before them,

and We certainly had sent among them warners, in the way of messengers to threaten [them].

So behold how was the consequence for them who were warned, namely, the disbelievers: in other words the sequel for them was [that they ended up in] the chastisement;

[all] except God’s sincere servants, namely, the believers, who are saved from chastisement because they were sincere in their worship (mukhlisīna); or (if one reads mukhlasīna) because God has made them sincerely devoted to such [worship].

And verily Noah called to Us, when he said, ‘My Lord: I have been overcome, so help [me] [Q. 54:10], and how excellent were the Hearers of the prayer, for him, were We: in other words he invoked Us against his people, so We destroyed them by drowning [them].

And We delivered him and his family from the great distress, which was the drowning,

and made his descendants the survivors, thus all human beings are descended from him, peace be upon him. He had three sons: Shem (Sām), the ancestor of the Arabs, the Persians and the Byzantines; Ham (Hām), the ancestor of the Negroes; and Japheth (Yāfith), the ancestor of the Turks, the Khazar and [the peoples of] Gog and Magog and [the inhabitants of] such regions.

And We left, We preserved, for him, fair praise, among posterity: [among] the prophets and communities [after him] until the Day of Resurrection [which is]:

‘Peace, from Us, be to Noah among the worlds!’

Thus indeed, in the way that We requited them, We requite the virtuous.

He was indeed one of Our faithful servants.

Then We did drown the others, the disbelievers from among his folk.

And truly of his adherents, that is, of those who agreed with him on the fundaments of religion, was Abraham, despite the fact that there was a long interval between them, 2640 years, and between them came [the prophets] Hūd and Sālih.

When he came to his Lord, in other words, he continued to follow Him upon coming to Him, with a heart that was pure, of any doubt or the like,

when he said, [while still] in this continuous state of his, to his father and his folk, in reproach: ‘What do — what is it that — you worship?

Is it a calumny (a-ifkan, as regards the two hamzas, the same applies as mentioned before) — gods other than God — that you desire? (ifkan is an object denoting reason; ālihatan is the direct object of turīdūna, ‘you desire’; ifk denotes the worst kind of lie). In other words: do you worship [any] other than God?

What then is your supposition regarding the Lord of the Worlds?’, having worshipped other than Him, [do you think] that He will leave you without punishment? No! They were a people of astrologers. On one occasion, they went out to celebrate a festival of theirs and left their food behind with their idols, claiming that they were securing thereby blessings for it and that they would eat it upon their return. They had said to the lord Abraham: ‘Come out with us’.

And he cast a glance at the stars — to delude them into thinking that he relies on them, so that they would then trust him —

and said, ‘Indeed I feel [I will be] sick’, that is, I will fall ill.

So they went away, to their festival, leaving him behind.

Then he turned, he stole away, to their gods, the idols, in front of which the food had been placed, and said, mockingly: ‘Will you not eat? — but they failed to utter [a word].

He then said: What is wrong with you that you do not speak?’ — but [still] he received no response.

He then turned on them striking [them] with his right hand, with might, smashing them. Those who saw him reported this to [the rest of] his people.

So they came running towards him, walking hurriedly, and they said to him, ‘We worship them while you smash them?!’

He said, to them in reproach: ‘Do you worship what you [yourselves] have carved, out of stone and other materials, idols,

when God created you and whatever you make?’, [whether it be] your act of carving and that which you have carved? So worship Him alone! (the mā [in wa-mā ta‘malūna, ‘and whatever you make’] is that of the verbal noun; but it is also said to introduce a relative clause, or it is adjectivally qualified).

They said, amongst themselves: ‘Build for him a structure, then fill it with firewood and set it on fire, and when it is ablaze, then cast him into the fierce fire’.

So they sought to outwit him, by flinging him into the fire, so that it may destroy him, but We made them the lowermost, the vanquished, as he came out of the fire unharmed.

And he said, ‘I shall indeed depart to my Lord, I shall emigrating to Him from the abode of disbelief — He will guide me, to the place to which My Lord has commanded that I end up in, and this was Syria. When he reached the Holy Land, he said:

My Lord! Grant me, a child, of the righteous’.

So We gave him the good tidings of a forbearing son.

And when he was old enough to walk with him, that is, to go about with him and help him out — this is said to have been [either] at the age of seven or at the age of thirteen — he said, ‘O my dear son, I see, that is, I have seen, in a dream that I shall sacrifice you — and the visions of prophets are [always] true and their actions are [inspired] by the command of God, exalted be He. So see what you think’, of this dream. He consulted him so that he [his son] might accept the idea of being sacrificed and comply with the command for it. He said, ‘O my father (the [final] tā’ [in abati] replaces the yā’ of the genitive [possessive] annexation [yā abī]) do whatever you have been commanded, to do. You shall find me, God willing, of the steadfast’, in this [affair].

And when they had both submitted, [when] they had submitted to and were prepared to comply with God’s command, exalted be He, and he had laid him down on his forehead, [when] he had pushed him down to the ground thereon — every human being has two brows (jabīn) between which is the forehead (jabha); this was at Minā. Abraham passed the knife across his [son’s] throat but it did not do anything, by some impediment of the Divine Power,

We called to him, ‘O Abraham!

Verily you have fulfilled the vision’, by what you have done, in that you were able to go through with the act of sacrifice. In other words, that [which you have done] suffices for you [as redemption] (the statement nādaynāhu, ‘We called to him’, is the response to the lammā, ‘when’, so that the wāw [in wa-nādaynāhu, ‘We called to him’] is extra). So, in the same way that We have rewarded you, do We reward those who are virtuous, to their own souls in obeying the Command [of God], by removing from them their distress.

Truly this, sacrifice to which he was commanded, was indeed a clear test’, that is to say, the ultimate test [of faith].

Then We ransomed him, the one whom he had been commanded to sacrifice, namely, Ishmael or Isaac — two different opinions — with a mighty sacrifice, [a mighty] ram from Paradise, the same one that Abel had offered as as sacrifice: Gabriel, peace be upon him, brought it and the lord Abraham sacrificed it as he cried, Allāhu akbar, ‘God is Great’.

And We left, We preserved, for him among posterity, fair praise [namely]:

‘Peace, from Us, be to Abraham!’

So, in way that We rewarded him, do We reward those who are virtuous, to their own souls.

Indeed he is one of Our faithful servants.

And We gave him the good tidings of [the birth of] Isaac — some have argued that this proves that the one who was sacrificed was not him [Isaac] — a prophet (nabiyyan is a future circumstantial qualifier, that is to say, ‘he will come to be, with his prophethood decreed), one of the righteous.

And We blessed him, by multiplying his descendants, and Isaac, his son, [We also blessed] by appointing the majority of prophets from among his progeny. And among their descendants is he who is virtuous, [he who is] a believer, and he who plainly wrongs his soul, [he who is] a disbeliever, whose disbelief is manifest.

And verily We favoured Moses and Aaron, with prophethood,

and We delivered them and their people, the Children of Israel, from the great distress, namely, Pharaoh’s enslavement of them.

And We helped them, against the Egyptians, so that they became the victors.

And We gave them the enlightening scripture, the one whose statements concerning prescribed punishments and rulings and otherwise are excellently expressed — this is the Torah.

And We guided them to the straight path, [the straight] way,

and We left, We preserved, for them among posterity, fair praise [namely]:

‘Peace, from Us, be to Moses and Aaron!’

So, just as We rewarded them both, do We reward the virtuous.

Indeed both were among Our faithful servants.

And truly Elias (read [wa-inna Ilyās] with the initial hamza or without [wa-inna’l-yāsa) was [also] one of the messengers. Some think that this [Elias] was the son of Aaron’s brother — [Aaron] the brother of Moses; but some say that this [Elias] was some other [person], who was sent to the people living in and around Baalbak.

When (idh is dependent because of an implicit [verb] udhkur, ‘mention’) he said to his people, ‘Will you not fear [God]?

Do you call on Baal — this was the name of an idol of theirs which was made of gold, from which the name of their city derives, with the addition of [the suffix] bak — that is to say, do you worship him, and abandon the Best of Creators, and not worship Him,

God, your Lord, and the Lord of your forefathers?’ (read [as predicates] allāhu, rabbukum and rabbu, in the nominative, because of the [implicit] omitted huwa [being the subject]; or read allāha, rabbakum and rabba, in the accusative, as supplements to ahsana, ‘the best of’).

But they denied him. So they will indeed be arraigned, in the Fire,

— [all] except God’s delivered servants, namely, the believers, who will be saved from it,

and We left for him among posterity, fair praise [namely]:

‘Peace, from Us, be to Elias!’. It is said that this [ilyāsīn] is [the same] Elias mentioned above; but it is also said that this denotes him together with [all] those who were believers with him, and so they have been coupled [under the same term] with him being the predominant, as when one might say al-Muhallabūn, ‘the Muhallabids’, to mean al-Muhallab and his folk; a variant reading has āl yāsīn, by which is meant his family as well as Elias himself.

Indeed so — just as We rewarded him — do We reward the virtuous.

Truly he is one of Our faithful servants.

And indeed Lot was one of the messengers;

mention, when We delivered him together with all his family,

except an old woman [who was] among those who stayed behind, in other words, those who stayed behind in the chastisement.

Then We destroyed [all] the others, the disbelievers from among his people.

And indeed you pass by them, by their remains and [the remains of] their dwellings during your travels, [both] in the morning, that is, during the daytime,

and at night: will you, O people of Mecca, not then understand?, what befell them and so take heed therefrom?

And indeed Jonah was one of the messengers;

when he fled to the laden ship — after he became furious with his people, as the chastisement which he had promised them did not come down on them; so he boarded the ship, which then stopped out in the deep sea. The seamen said, ‘There is a runaway slave here [upon this ship] who has fled from his master: a casting of lots should expose him!’

Then he drew lots, with the passengers on the ship, and was of those rejected, of the losers in the draw and so they threw him into the sea.

Then the whale swallowed him while he was blameworthy, that is, while he was guilty of a blameworthy thing, having gone to sea and embarked the ship without his Lord’s permission.

And had he not been one of those who glorify [God], that is to say, those who make remembrance [of God], for inside the whale’s belly he was repeatedly saying [the words] ‘There is no god except You. Glory be to You! I have indeed been one of the wrongdoers’ [Q. 21:87],

he would have tarried in its belly until the day when they are raised, in other words, the whale’s belly would have been his tomb until the Day of Resurrection.

Then We cast him, We flung him out of the belly of the whale, onto the barren land, onto the face of the earth, that is, onto the shore on that same day — or three, or seven, or twenty, or forty days later — and he was sick, ailing like a [newly-born] featherless chick.

And We made a gourd plant to grow above him, to provide shade for him with its stem, which is not the case usually with gourds, as a miracle for him; a mountain goat would come to him in the morning and in the evening and he would drink its milk, until he finally regained his strength.

And We sent him, afterwards — as [We had done] before, to a people in Nineveh, in the region of Mosul — to a [community of a] hundred thousand or, in fact, more — [a community of] twenty, thirty or seventy thousand.

And they believed, after they saw [with their own eyes] the chastisement which they had been promised. So We gave them comfort, We kept them alive to enjoy their wealth, for a while, until their terms [of life] would be concluded [while they took comfort] therein.

So ask them, inquire of the Meccan disbelievers, by way of reproach: are daughters to be for your Lord, after their claim that the angels were God’s daughters, while sons are to be for them?, so that the best becomes exclusively theirs?

Or did We create the angels females while they were witnesses?, to Our [act of] creation, that they might then say such a thing?

Lo! it is indeed out of their [own] mendacity, their [own] lies, that they say,

‘God has begotten’, when they say that the angels are God’s daughters. And verily they are liars, in this [respect].

Has He preferred daughters to sons? (read a’stafā, ‘has He preferred’, indicating an interrogative [hamza], which stands in place of the omitted conjunctive hamza).

What is wrong with you? How do you judge?, [how do you make] such a depraved judgement?

Will you not then remember? (tadhakkarūna: the tā’ [of tatadhakkarūna] has been assimilated with the dhāl), that He, glory be to Him, is exalted above having a child?

Or do you have a clear warrant?, plain definitive proof that God has a child?

Then produce your scripture, the Torah, and show Me this [as it is mentioned] in it, if you are being truthful, about this statement of yours.

And they, namely, the idolaters, have set up between Him, exalted be He, and the jinn, namely, the angels (jinna: they are so called because they are hidden [ijtinān] from vision) a kinship, by saying that they are God’s daughters, while the jinn certainly know that they, that is, those who say this, shall indeed be arraigned, into the Fire, to be chastised therein.

Glory be to God, affirming that He is exalted, above what they attribute, [to Him] in the way of His having a child,

— [all] except God’s devoted servants, namely, believers (the exceptive clause here is discontinuous) in other words, [that is] because they declare that God transcends what such individuals attribute [to Him].

For indeed you and what you worship, of idols,

— you cannot tempt, anyone, thereto, that is, to [incline to] your [worshipped] idols (‘alayhi, ‘thereto’, is semantically connected to His saying [bi-fātinīna], ‘you cannot tempt’),

except him who will burn in Hell, in God’s knowledge, exalted be He.

Gabriel said to the Prophet (s): And there is not one of us, [us] the company of angels, but has a known station, in the heavens, in which he worships God and which he does not transgress.

And indeed it is we who are the rangers, of our feet in prayer.

And indeed it is we who give glory, [it is we] who declare that God transcends what does not befit Him.

And indeed (in, is softened in place of the hardened one) they, the Meccan disbelievers, used to say,

‘If we had but a reminder, a scripture, from the ancients, that is, from among the scriptures of past communities,

we would have surely been God’s devoted servants’, [devoting] worship purely to Him.

God, exalted be He, says: Yet they disbelieved in it, in other words, in the Book that came to them, namely, the Qur’ān, more glorious than [all] those other scriptures; but they will come to know, the consequences of their disbelief.

And verily Our Word, [containing the promise] of victory, has gone beforehand in favour of Our servants, the messengers: and that [Word] is, I shall assuredly prevail, I and My messengers [Q. 58:21] —

or it is His [following] saying — assuredly they shall be helped,

and assuredly Our hosts, namely, the believers, they will indeed be the victors, over the disbelievers by [their being given] the definitive proofs and assistance against them in this world. And if some of these [believers] are not victorious over them in this world, then assuredly in the Hereafter [they will be so].

So leave them, in other words, shun the Meccan disbelievers, for a while, until [such time as] you are commanded to fight them;

and watch them, when the chastisement is sent down on them; for they will [soon] see, the consequences of their disbelief.

They then said in mockery, ‘When will this chastisement be sent down?’ God, exalted be He, threatens them by saying: Do they seek to hasten Our chastisement?

But when it descends in their courtyard — al-Farrā’ said that the Arabs find it sufficient to refer to a people by referring to ‘their courtyard’ — how awful, how terrible a morning, will be the morning for those who were warned (the overt noun [al-mundharīn] has replaced the [third person] pronominalisation [in sāhatihim]).

So leave them for a while,

and watch; for they will [soon] see — this [statement] is repeated in order to emphasise the threat made to them and to reassure the Prophet (s).

Glory be to your Lord, the Lord of Might, of Triumph, [exalted is He] above what they allege!, in the way of His having a child.

And peace be to the messengers, who convey from God the Message of the Oneness [of God] and [His] Laws.

And praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds, for granting these [messengers] victory and destroying the disbelievers.

Sād: God knows best what He means by this [letter]. By the Qur’ān bearing the Remembrance, that is, [bearing] the Pronouncement; or [what is meant is that the Qur’ān is a Book] of renown (the response to this oath has been omitted, in other words: ‘It is not as the Meccan disbelievers say, that there are many gods’).

Nay, but those who disbelieve, from among the people of Mecca, dwell in conceit, in self-glory and [in] disdain of faith, and defiance, disagreement with, and enmity towards, the Prophet (s).

How many — in other words, many — a generation, a community of past communities, We have destroyed before them, and they cried out, when the chastisement was sent down on them, when it was no longer the time for escape, that is to say, the time was not one for fleeing (the [suffixed] tā’ [of wa-lāta] is extra; the sentence is a circumstantial qualifier referring to the subject of [the verb] nādaw, ‘they cried out’) in other words, they called for help but the situation was such that there could be no escape or deliverance; but still the Meccan disbelievers have not taken heed from their example.

And they marvel that a warner has come to them from among themselves, a messenger from among their number, to warn them and to threaten them with [the punishment of] the Fire after resurrection — and this [warner] is the Prophet (s). And those who disbelieve (the overt noun [al-kāfirūnā] has replaced the [third person] pronominalisation) say, ‘This is a sorcerer, a liar.

Has he made the gods One God? — for he had said to them, ‘Say: there is no god except God’ — in other words [they objected]: how could one god suffice for all of creation? Lo! that is indeed a curious thing’.

And the council from among them go about, from the place of their assembly at the house of Abū Tālib and [the place] where they heard the Prophet (s) say, ‘Say: there is no god except God’, saying, ‘Go!, they say to one another, go, and stand by your gods, adhere firmly to worship of them; lo! this, that has been mentioned concerning the Oneness of God, is indeed a thing sought, from us.

We never heard of this in the latter-day creed, namely, the creed of Jesus. This is surely [nothing] but an invention, [mere] lies.

Has the Remembrance, the Qur’ān, been revealed to him, Muhammad (s), out of [all of] us’, when he is neither the elder nor the noblest among us? In other words, it could not have been revealed to him (read a-unzila pronouncing both hamzas, or not pronouncing the second one, but in both cases inserting an intervening alif or without [this insertion]). God, exalted be He, says: Nay, but they are in doubt concerning My Remembrance, My revelation, that is, the Qur’ān, for they deny the one who has brought it. Nay, but they have not yet tasted My chastisement, and if they were to taste it, they would certainly believe the Prophet (s) in what he has brought — but then [in such a case] their belief [in the Prophet] would be of no benefit to them.

Or do they possess the treasuries of your Lord’s mercy, the Mighty, the Victor, the Bestower?, [treasuries] such as prophethood and otherwise, so that they might give it to whomever they want?

Or do they possess the kingdom of the heavens and the earth and whatever is between them? If this is what they claim: Then let them ascend by the means, [of ascension] that lead to the heaven and bring [down] some revelation (wahy) and then assign it exclusively to whomever they wish (am in both verses represents the [rhetorical] hamza of denial).

A routed (mahzūmun is an adjectival qualification of jundun, ‘host’) host [is all that they are], in other words, they are [nothing but] a despicable host, nothing more — in their denial of you — from among the factions (mina’l-ahzābi, also an adjectival qualification of jundun) in other words, [they are] like those hosts of factions who were in confederation against prophets before you: these were defeated and destroyed, and likewise We shall destroy these [people].

Before them the people of Noah denied (the inflection of [the verb kadhdabat, ‘denied’, that is governed by] qawmu, ‘people’, is in the feminine person because of the [implicit] sense), and [so did those of] ‘Ād and Pharaoh, he of the stakes — he used to fix four stakes for the person who incurred his wrath and tie to these [stakes] that person’s hands and feet and then torture him —

and Thamūd and the people of Lot and the dwellers in the wood, a small forest, namely, the people of Shu‘ayb, peace be upon him — those were the factions.

Each one, of the factions, did not but deny the messengers, for when they deny one, they have [in effect] denied them all, since their call [to God] is [the same] one, namely, the call to [affirmation of] His Oneness. So My retribution was justified, [it was] necessary.

And these, that is, the disbelievers of Mecca, do not await but a single Cry, namely, the Blast of the Resurrection that will herald chastisement for them, for which there will be no revoking (read fawāq or fuwāq).

And they said — after the following [verse] was revealed, As for him who is given his book in his right hand … to the end [of the verse, Q. 69:19] — ‘Our Lord, hasten on for us the record of our deeds before the Day of Reckoning’ — they said this mockingly.

God, exalted be He, says: Bear patiently what they say and remember Our servant David, the one of fortitude, that is to say, [the one] of fortitude in worship: he used to fast every other day and keep vigil for half the night, sleep for a third and then keep vigil for the [last] sixth. Indeed he was a penitent [soul], always returning to what pleases God.

Truly We disposed the mountains to glorify [God] with him, with the same glorification, at evening, at the time of the night prayer, and at sunrise, at the time of the morning prayer, which is when the sun has fully risen with its light extending everywhere.

And, We disposed, the birds, mustered [in flocks], gathered before him, glorifying with him; each, of the mountains and birds, turning to him, reverting to obedience of him by glorifying [God with him].

And We strengthened his Kingdom, We reinforced it with guards and hosts: every night there thirty thousand men would be standing guard at his sanctuary; and gave him wisdom, prophethood and sound judgement in [all] matters, and decisive speech, [the ability to formulate] a satisfactory statement [for a decision] in any endeavour.

And has there come to you, O Muhammad (s) (the purpose of the interrogative [indicated by hal] here is to provoke curiosity and a desire to listen to what will follow) the tale of the disputants, when they scaled the sanctuary?, David’s sanctuary, that is, his place of prayer, for they had been prohibited from entering by the [front] gates because of his being engaged in worship, in other words, [has it come to you] their tale and their account?

When they entered upon David, and he was frightened by them. And they said, ‘Do not fear; we are, two disputants (some say that this means ‘two groups’, in order to agree with the plural person [of the verb dakhalū, ‘they entered’]; others say, ‘two individuals’ with the plural person actually denoting these two; al-khasm may refer to a one or more individuals. These two were angels who had come in the form of two disputants, between whom there [was supposed to have] occurred the situation mentioned — [but] only hypothetically — in order to alert David, peace be upon him, to what he had done: he had ninety nine women but desired the woman of a man who had only her and no other. He [David] had married her and consummated the marriage. One of us has infringed upon the [rights of the] other, so judge justly between us and do not transgress, [do not] be unjust, and guide us, direct us, to the right path’, the correct way.

‘Behold, this brother of mine, in other words, my fellow co-religionist, has ninety-nine ewes — here used to represent the women — while I have a single ewe; yet he said, “Entrust it to me”, in other words, make me in charge of it, and he overcame me in speech’, in other words, in the argument; so the latter conceded charge of it to him.

He said, ‘He has certainly wronged you by asking for your ewe that he may add it to his sheep. And indeed many associates infringe upon [the rights of] one another, except such as believe and perform righteous deeds, but few are they!’ (mā emphasises the ‘fewness’). As the two angels were ascending to the heaven one said to the other, ‘He has certainly passed judgement on himself!’ David was thus alerted [to his deed]. God, exalted be He, says: And David thought, in other words, he became certain, that We had indeed tried him, that We had caused him to fall into a trial, that is, a test, through his love for that woman. So he sought forgiveness of his Lord and fell down bowing, in other words, prostrate, and repented.

So We forgave him that and indeed he has [a station of] nearness with Us, that is, [even] more good [things] in this world, and a fair return, in the Hereafter.

‘O David! We have indeed made you a vicegerent on the earth, managing the affairs of people; so judge justly between people and do not follow desire, that is, the desires of the soul, that it then lead you astray from the way of God, that is to say, from the proofs that indicate [the truth of] His Oneness. Truly those who go astray from the way of God, in other words, from belief in God — for them there will be a severe chastisement because of their forgetting the Day of Reckoning’, as a result of their having neglected faith. For had they been certain of [the truth of] the Day of Reckoning, they would have [first] been believers in this world.

And We did not create the heavens and the earth and all that is between them in vain, frivolously. That, namely, the creation of what has been mentioned as being for no [particular] purpose, is the supposition of those who disbelieve, from among the people of Mecca. So woe — a valley [in hell-fire] — to the disbelievers from the Fire!

Or shall We treat those who believe and perform righteous deeds like those who cause corruption in the earth; or shall We treat the God-fearing like the profligate? This was revealed when the Meccan disbelievers said to the believers, ‘In the Hereafter we will receive the same [reward] as that which you will receive’ (am, ‘or’, contains the [rhetorical] hamza of denial).

A Book (kitābun, the predicate of a missing subject, namely, hādhā, ‘this is’) that We have revealed to you, full of blessing, that they may contemplate (yaddabbarū is actually yatadabbarū, but the tā’ has been assimilated with the dāl) its signs, [that] they may reflect upon its meanings and become believers, and that they may remember, that they may be admonished — those people of pith, those possessors of intellect.

And We bestowed on David, Solomon, his son — what an excellent servant!, that is, Solomon. Truly he was a penitent [soul], always returning [to God] with glorification and remembrance at all times.

When one evening — which is the period after midday — there were displayed before him the prancing steeds (al-sāfināt, ‘horses’, is the plural of sāfina, which denotes [a horse] standing on three legs with the fourth supported on the edge of the hoof, and derives from [the verb] safana, yasfinu sufūnan; al-jiyād is the plural of jawād, which is a ‘racer’; the meaning is that these [horses] are such that when they are halted they stand still and when they run they surpass [others] in speed). One thousand horses were displayed before him after he had performed the midday prayer, for he had wanted to use them in a holy struggle (jihād) against an enemy. But when the display reached the nine-hundredth [horse], the sun set and he had not performed the afternoon prayer. So he was greatly distressed.

He said, ‘Lo! I have loved, I have desired, the love of [worldly] good things, that is, [of] horses, over the remembrance of my Lord’, that is, [over] the afternoon prayer, until it, that is, the sun, disappeared behind the [night’s] veil, [until] it was concealed by that which veils it from sight.

Bring them back to me!, that is, the horses that were displayed; and they so brought them back. Then he set about slashing, with his sword, [their] legs (al-sūq is the plural of sāq) and necks, in other words, he slaughtered them and cut off their legs as an offering [of atonement] to God, exalted be He, for having been distracted by them from the prayer. He gave all the meat thereof as voluntary alms and so God compensated him what was better and faster that these [horses], and this was the wind, which blew at his command as he wished.

And We certainly tried Solomon: We tested him by wresting his kingdom from him, because he had married a woman [solely] out of his desire for her. She used to worship idols in his [own] home without his knowledge. Now, [control of] his kingdom lay in his ring. On one occasion, needing to withdraw [to relieve himself], he took it off and left it with this woman of his, whose name was al-Amīna, as was his custom; but a jinn, [disguised] in the form of Solomon, came to her and seized it from her. And We cast upon his throne a [lifeless] body, which was that [very] jinn, and he was [the one known as] Sakhr — or it was some other [jinn]; he sat upon Solomon’s throne and so [as was the case with Solomon] the birds and other [creatures] devoted themselves to him [in service]. When Solomon came out [of his palace], having seen him [the jinn] upon his throne, he said to the people, ‘I am Solomon [not him]!’ But they did not recognise him. Then he repented — Solomon returned to his kingdom, many days later, after he had managed to acquire the ring. He wore it and sat upon his throne [again].

He said, ‘My Lord! Forgive me and grant me a kingdom that shall not belong to anyone after me, in other words, other than me (this [use of min ba‘dī to mean ‘other than me’] is similar to [Q. 45:23] fa-man yahdīh min ba‘di’Llāh, ‘who will guide him other than God?’). Truly You are the Bestower’.

So We disposed for him the wind, which blew softly, gently, at his command wherever he intended.

And the devils [also We disposed], every builder, building marvellous edifices, and diver, in the sea, bringing up pearls,

and others too, from among them, bounded together in fetters, in shackles with their hands tied to their necks.

And We said to him: ‘This is Our gift. So bestow, grant thereof to whomever you wish, or withhold, from giving, without any reckoning’, in other words, without your being called to account for any of this.

And indeed he has [a station of] nearness with Us and a fair resort — a similar [statement] has already appeared [in another verse above].

And mention also Our servant Job, when he called out to his Lord, [saying], ‘Lo! Satan has afflicted me with hardship, harm, and suffering’, pain: he attributes all this to Satan, even though all things are from God, to show reverence [in his call] to Him, exalted be He.

And it was said to him: ‘Stamp your foot, on the ground — and he stamped [it] and a spring of water gushed forth, and it was said: This is a cool bath, [cool] water for you to wash with, and a drink’, for you to drink of. So he washed himself and drank [from it] whereat every ailment that had affected him internally and externally disappeared.

And We gave him [back] his family along with others like them, that is, God brought back to life all the children of his that had died and provided him with as many [in addition to them], as a mercy, a grace, from us, and a reminder, an admonition, to people of pith, possessors of intellect.

And [We said to him], ‘Take in your hand a bunch of twigs, or some blades of grass, and smite therewith, your wife — for he had sworn to smite her a hundred times on one occasion when she was late in coming to him — and do not break [your] oath’, by not smiting her: so he took a hundred rushes and smote her with them once [and that sufficed to fulfil his oath]. Truly We found him to be steadfast. What an excellent servant!, [was] Job. Indeed he was a penitent [soul], always returning to God, exalted be He.

And mention [also] Our servants Abraham, and Isaac and Jacob — men of fortitude, vigorous in their worship, and insight, deep understanding of religion (a variant reading [for ‘ibādanā, ‘Our servants’] has [singular] ‘abdanā, ‘Our servant’, with Ibrāhīma as the explication thereof, and what follows as being a supplement to ‘abdanā, ‘Our servant’).

Assuredly We purified them with an exclusive [thought], namely, the remembrance of the Abode, of the Hereafter: in other words to [always] remember it and to work for it (a variant reading [for bi-khālisatin dhikrā’l-dār] has the genitive construction [bi-khālisati dhikrā’l-dār], making this [dhikrā al-dār, ‘remembrance of the Abode’] the explicative thereof).

And indeed in Our sight they are of the elect, the excellent (akhyār is the plural of khayyir).

And mention [also] Our servants Ishmael, and Elisha, who was a prophet (the lām [here in al-Yasa‘] is extra) and Dhū’l-Kifl — there is disagreement over whether he was a prophet; it is said that [he was so called because] he looked after (kafala) a hundred prophets who had sought refuge with him from being killed. Each, that is, every one of them, was among the excellent (akhyār is the plural of khayyir).

This is a remembrance, of them, [made] by [the mention of] fair praise [of them] here; and indeed for the God-fearing, who comprise them, there will truly be a fair return, in the Hereafter —

Gardens of Eden (jannāti ‘Adnin is either a substitution for, or an explicative supplement to, husna ma’ābin, ‘a fair return’) whose gates are [flung] open for them;

reclining therein, on couches; therein they call for plenteous fruit and drink.

And with them [there] will be maidens of restrained glances, restricting their eyes to their spouses, of a like age, of the same age, girls who are thirty three years of age (atrāb is the plural of tirb).

‘This, that is mentioned, is what you are promised, by way of the unseen (there is a shift in the address away from the third [to the second] person]) for the Day of Reckoning.

This is indeed Our provision, which will never be exhausted’, in other words, one which will never cease (this [last] sentence [mā lahu min nafādin] is a circumstantial qualifier referring to rizqunā, ‘Our provision’; or it is a second predicate of inna, ‘indeed’, meaning that it will be ‘everlasting’).

That, which is mentioned, will be [the reward] for the believers [is so]; but for the insolent (this is a new sentence) there will surely be an evil [place of] return —

Hell, which they will enter — an evil resting place!

This, chastisement — inferred [as so] by what follows — let them then taste it: burning hot water and pus (read ghasāq or ghassāq), the festering matter excreted by the inhabitants of the Fire;

and other (ākhar may be plural or singular) kinds [of torment] resembling it, in other words, like the boiling water and pus mentioned, in pairs, of all sorts, in other words, their chastisement will consist of various kinds.

And it will be said to them as they enter the Fire with their followers: ‘This is a horde about to plunge, to enter, with you, into the Fire violently — at which point those who used to be followed say: no welcome [is there] for them [here]!, in other words, [they will find] no comfort for them [here]. They will indeed roast in the Fire’.

They, the followers, say, ‘Nay, but for you [there is] no welcome! You prepared this, that is, disbelief, for us. So what an evil abode!’, for us and for you, is the Fire.

They, also, say, ‘Our Lord, whoever prepared this for us, give him double his chastisement, that is, [give him in addition] the like of his chastisement, for his disbelief, in the Fire!’

And they, the disbelievers of Mecca, say, while they are in the Fire: ‘What is the matter with us that we do not see [here] men whom we used to count, in the world, among the wicked?

Did we treat them mockingly? (read sukhriyyan, or sikhriyyan), did we use to deride them in [the life of] the world (the [final] yā’ [in sikhriyyā] is attributive). In other words, are they missing? Or have [our] eyes missed them [here]?’, so that we have not caught sight of them. Such [men] were the poor among the Muslims, like ‘Ammār [b. Yāsir], Bilāl [al-Habashī], Suhayb [al-Rūmī] and Salmān [al-Fārisī].

Assuredly that is true: such [a scene] will necessarily take place, which is, the wrangling of the inhabitants of the Fire — as shown above.

Say, O Muhammad (s), to the disbelievers of Mecca: ‘I am only a warner, to threaten [disbelievers] with [punishment in] the Fire. And there is no god except God, the One, the All-Compelling, of [all] His creatures;

Lord of the heavens and the earth and all that is between them, the Mighty, Whose way [always] prevails, the [ever] Forgiving’, of His friends.

Say, to them: ‘It is a tremendous tiding

from which you are turning away, namely, the Qur’ān, of which I have informed you and in which I have brought you what can only be known by revelation, and that is God’s saying:

I had no knowledge of the High Council, that is to say, [of] the angels, when they disputed, in the matter of Adam, when God, exalted be He, said [to them]: ‘I am appointing on earth a vicegerent’, to the end [of the verse, Q. 2:30].

All that is revealed to me is that I am just a plain warner’, one whose warning is clear.

Mention, when your Lord said to the angels, ‘Indeed I am about to create a human being out of clay, and this was Adam.

So when I have proportioned him, completed him, and breathed in him, [when I have] caused to flow [therein], My spirit, so that he becomes a living [being] — the addition of ‘the spirit’ to Adam is an honour for him; the ‘spirit’ is a subtle body that gives life to a human being by permeating him — then fall down in prostration before him!’ — a prostration of salutation [that is actually] a bow.

Thereat the angels prostrated, all of them together (there are two emphases here [kulluhum and ajma‘ūn]);

except Iblīs, the father of the jinn, who was among the [audience of] angels; he was disdainful and he was one of the disbelievers, according to God’s knowledge, exalted be He.

He said, ‘O Iblīs! What prevents you from prostrating before that which I have created with My own hands?, in other words, whose creation I [Myself] have undertaken. This [in itself] is an honour for Adam, as God has [Himself] undertaken the [unmediated] creation of all creatures. Are you being arrogant, now, in refraining from prostrating (an interrogative meant as a rebuke); or are you of the exalted?’, of the proud, and have therefore disdained to prostrate yourself, because you are one of them?

He said, ‘I am better than him. You created me from fire and You created him from clay’.

He said, ‘Then begone hence, that is, from Paradise — or, it is said, [begone] from the heavens — for you are indeed accursed, outcast.

And indeed My curse shall be on you until the Day of Judgement’, [the Day] of Requital.

He said, ‘My Lord, then reprieve me until the day when they, mankind, will be raised’.

He said, ‘Then you will indeed be among the reprieved

until the day of the known time’, the time of the First Blast.

He said, ‘Now, by Your might, I shall surely pervert them all,

except those servants of Yours among them who will be saved’, namely, the believers.

He said, ‘So the truth is — and the truth I [always] speak (read both [words] in the accusative [fa’l-haqqa wa’l-haqqa]; or with the first in the nominative and the second in the accusative because of the verb [aqūlu, ‘I speak’] that follows. As for reading the first one in the accusative, this would be on account of the mentioned verb [qāla, ‘he said’]; but it is also said to be on account of its being a verbal noun, the sense being uhiqqu l-haqqa, ‘I establish the truth’; or [it is in the accusative by implication] if the particle for the oath [fa] is removed. It [the first haqq] could also be in the nominative because of its being the subject of a missing predicate, as in fa’l-haqqu minnī, ‘truth [comes] from Me’. It is also said that [the sentence means] fa’l-haqqu qasamī, ‘the truth is [this] oath from Me’, the response to which is the following [la-amla’anna …]) —

I shall assuredly fill Hell with you, by way of [filling it with] your progeny, and with whoever of them follows you, that is, of mankind, all together’.

Say: ‘I do not ask of you, in return for this, for delivering the Message [to you], any reward, any fee; nor am I an impostor, so as to make up the Qur’ān myself.

It is only, in other words, the Qur’ān is only, a reminder, an admonition, for all worlds, [those of] humans, jinn and [other] rational beings, [but] excluding the angels.

And you will assuredly come to know, O disbelievers of Mecca, its tiding, the news of its truth, in [due] time’, that is to say, on the Day of Resurrection (‘ilm, ‘knowing’, is here being used in the sense of ‘urf, ‘experience’; the prefixed lām [in la-ta‘lamunna, ‘you will assuredly know’] is for an implicit oath, in other words [what is meant is] wa’Llāhi [la-ta‘lamunna, ‘By God you will assuredly know’]).

The revelation of the Book, the Qur’ān (tanzīlu’l-kitābi, the subject) is from God (mina’Llāhi, its predicate) the Mighty, in His kingdom, the Wise, in His handiwork.

Indeed We have revealed to you, O Muhammad (s), the Book with the truth (bi’l-haqqi is semantically connected to anzalnā, ‘We have revealed’); so worship God, devoting your religion purely to Him, [pure] of any idolatry, in other words, affirming His Oneness.

Surely to God belongs pure religion, none other than Him being deserving of it. And those who take besides Him, the idols [as], patrons: and they are the disbelievers of Mecca — they say: ‘We only worship them so that they may bring us near to God’ (zulfā, a verbal noun, with the sense of taqrīban, ‘for the sake of nearness’). God will indeed judge between them, and the Muslims, concerning that about which they differ, of religion, and so admit the believers into Paradise, and the disbelievers into the Fire. Truly God does not guide one who is a liar, attributing a child to Him, a disbeliever, worshipping other than God.

Had God wanted to take a son — as they allege [that He has], ‘The Compassionate One has taken [to Himself] a son’ [Q. 19:88], He could have chosen from what He has created whatever He willed, and taken it as a child, instead of the angels whom they claim to be God’s daughters, or [their claim] that ‘Ezra is the son of God’, or that ‘Jesus is the son of God’ [cf. Q. 9:30]. Glory be to Him, in exaltation of Him as being above that He should take a child. He is God, the One, the All-Compelling, over all His creatures.

He created the heavens and the earth with the truth (bi’l-haqqi is semantically connected to khalaqa, ‘He created’). He turns the night into day, so that it grows, and turns the day into night, so that it grows, and He has disposed the sun and the moon, each running, in its course, for an appointed term, until the Day of Resurrection. Verily it is He Who is the Mighty, Whose way [always] prevails, Requiter of His enemies, the [ever] Forgiving, of His friends.

He created you from a single soul, namely, Adam, then made from it its mate, Eve; and He sent down for you of the cattle, [of] camels, cows, small cattle, sheep and goats, eight kinds, of each kind a male and a female — as He makes clear in sūrat al-An‘ām [Q. 6:143f.]. He creates you in your mothers’ wombs, creation after creation, that is to say, as a sperm-drop, then a blood clot, then a foetus, in a threefold darkness, that is, the darkness of the belly, that of the womb and that of the placenta. That is God, your Lord. To Him belongs [all] sovereignty. There is no god except Him. Why then are you being turned away?, from worshipping Him to worshipping [things] other than Him?

If you are ungrateful, indeed God is Independent of you, though He does not approve of ingratitude for His servants, even if He should will it [to manifest itself] in some of them. And if you give thanks, to God and thus become believers, He will approve of it (read yardah, or yardahu, either lengthening the vowel or not), that is, [of such] thankfulness, for you. And no burdened soul shall bear the burden of another [soul], in other words, it will not bear [the responsibility for] it. Then to your Lord will be your return, whereat He will inform you of what you used to do. Indeed He is Knower of what is in the breasts, of what is in the hearts [of men].

And when distress befalls a person, that is, the disbeliever, he supplicates his Lord, he implores, turning, returning, to Him penitently. Then, when He bestows on him a grace from Himself, he forgets, he neglects, Him Whom he had supplicated, implored, before, namely, God (in other words mā functions as min, ‘whom’) and sets up equals, associates, with God, that he may lead [others] astray (read li-yadilla or li-yudilla) from His way — [from] the religion of Islam. Say: ‘Revel in your ingratitude for a while — for the remainder of your term [of life]. You shall indeed be among the inhabitants of the Fire’.

Or is he who (read, softened, a-man) devotes himself [in worship], observing duties of obedience, in the watches of the night, [during] its hours, prostrating and standing, in prayer, apprehensive of the [eventuality of the] Hereafter, in other words, fearing its chastisement, and hoping for the mercy, the Paradise, of his Lord … ?, like one who is disobedient through disbelief or otherwise? (a variant reading has am-man, pronouncing the hamza, so that am has the sense of bal, ‘rather’). Say: ‘Are those who know equal with those who do not know?’, in other words, they are not equal, just as the person of knowledge is not equal to the ignorant one. Only people of pith, possessors of intellect, remember, [only they] are admonished.

Say: ‘O servants of Mine who believe! Fear your Lord, that is to say, [fear] His chastisement, by being obedient to Him. For those who are virtuous in this world, through obedience, there will be good, and that is Paradise, and God’s earth is vast, so emigrate throughout it, away from the [company of] disbelievers and the sight of indecencies. Truly the steadfast, in [their] obedience [of God] and in [enduring] whatever [hardship] they may be tested with, will be paid their reward in full without any reckoning’, without any measure or any scales [to work it out].

Say: ‘Indeed I have been commanded to worship God devoting [my] religion purely to Him, [pure] of any idolatry,

and I have been commanded to be the first of those who submit’, from this community.

Say: ‘Indeed, should I disobey my Lord, I fear the chastisement of a tremendous day’.

Say: ‘God [alone] I worship, devoting [my] religion purely to Him, [pure] of any idolatry.

So worship whatever you wish besides Him’, other than Him — herein is a threat for them as well as a declaration [of the fact] that they do not worship God, exalted be He. Say: ‘Indeed the losers are those who [will] have lost their souls and their families on the Day of Resurrection, by condemning their souls to abide [forever] in the Fire, and their failure to attaining [the bliss promised among] the black-eyed virgins who would have been prepared for them in Paradise had they been believers. Truly that is the manifest loss!’

Above them they will have canopies, layers, of fire, and beneath them [they will have [similar] canopies, of fire. That is what God frightens His servants with, that is, the believing ones, that they may have fear of Him — this [sense of the verse] is suggested by [what follows]), “So, O servants of Mine, fear Me!”’

As for those who steer clear of the worship of false deities, graven images, and turn penitently, apply themselves, to God, there are good tidings for them, of Paradise. So give [such] good tidings to My servants,

who listen to the words [of God] and follow the best [sense] of it, which is that which contains [the means to] righteousness for them. Those, they are the ones whom God has guided; and those, they are the people of pith, the possessors of intellect.

Can he against whom the word of chastisement has been fulfilled …?, namely [the words], I will surely fill Hell [with jinn and mankind together] [Q. 11:119]; Will you deliver, bring out, one who is in the Fire? (this is the response to the conditional clause, in which the overt qualification [man fī’l-nār, ‘one who is in the Fire’] replaces the pronominalisation [a-fa-man, ‘he … whom’]; the hamza [in a-fa-anta, ‘will you’] is for rejection, in other words [the sense is that] you will not be able to guide him and therefore deliver him from the Fire).

But as for those who fear their Lord, and therefore obey Him — for them there will be lofty abodes with [other] lofty abodes built above them, with rivers flowing beneath them, that is, beneath [both] the upper and the lower abodes — a promise of God (wa‘da’Llāhi, in the accusative because of an implied verb governing it). God does not fail the tryst, [He does not break] His promise.

Have you not seen, realised, that God sends down water from the heaven, then conducts it as springs, making it enter points of springs, in the ground? Then with it He brings forth crops of diverse hues. Then they wither, they become dried-out, and you see them, for example, after having been green, turning yellow. Then He turns them into chaff. Truly in that there is a reminder for people of pith, possessors of intellect, by which they may be reminded, for it is an indication of God’s Oneness and His power.

Is he whose breast God has opened to Islam, and becomes guided, so that he follows a light from his Lord …?, like he whose heart He has sealed [with disbelief]? — this [understanding of the ellipsis] is indicated by [what follows]. So woe — an expression indicating ‘chastisement’ — to those whose hearts have been hardened against the remembrance of God, that is, [hardened] against the acceptance of the Qur’ān. Such are in manifest error.

God has revealed the best of discourses, a Book (kitāban, substitutes for ahsana, ‘the best’) namely, a Qur’ān, consimilar, in other words, some of its parts are similar to others in terms of [their] arrangement and otherwise, in coupled phrases — [a Book] in which the Promise [of reward] is coupled with the Threat [of punishment], together with other such [couplings] — whereat quiver, at the mention of whose Threat shiver, the skins of those who fear their Lord; then their skins and their hearts soften to, they are reassured by, the remembrance of God, that is, at the mention of His Promise. That, Book, is God’s guidance, by which He guides whomever He will, of His servants; and whomever God leads astray, for him there is no guide.

Is he who will be fending off, [is he] who will encounter, with his face the awful chastisement on the Day of Resurrection …?, that is, the most severe [chastisement], when he is flung into the Fire with his hands bound to his neck in fetters, [is he] like one who will be secure from it by entering Paradise? And it will be said to the wrongdoers, namely, the disbelievers of Mecca: ‘Taste [now] what you used to earn’, that is, [taste] the requital for it.

Those who were before them denied, their messengers with regard to the coming of the chastisement; and so the chastisement came on them whence they were not aware, in a way that would never have occurred to them.

So God made them taste disgrace, abasement and humiliation, in the way of being transformed [into swine] and being killed and otherwise, in the life of this world. And the chastisement of the Hereafter will surely be greater, had they, that is, the deniers, known, [the nature of] the chastisement thereof, they would not have denied.

And verily We have struck, coined, for mankind in this Qur’ān every [kind of] similitude, that perhaps they may remember, [that perhaps] they may be admonished —

an Arabic Qur’ān (qur’ānan ‘arabiyyan, a circumstantial qualifier for emphasis) without any deviation, that is, [without] any contradiction or variance, that perhaps they may guard themselves, against disbelief.

God strikes, for the idolater and the believer in God’s Oneness, a similitude: a man (rajulan, substitutes for mathalan, ‘a similitude’) shared by several [masters], quarrelling, disputing, ill-mannered, and a man belonging exclusively to one man. Are the two equal in comparison? (mathalan, for specification), in other words, the slave of many [masters] is not the same as the slave of a single person. For in the case of the former, if all of his masters were to demand his service simultaneously, he would be confused as to whom of them he should serve — which is the similitude of the idolater; the latter [the slave of one] is the similitude of the one who believes in the One God. Praise be to God!, alone. Nay, but most of them, that is, the people of Mecca, do not know, the chastisement in which they will end up and so they associate others with God.

You — an address to the Prophet (s) — will indeed die, and they [too] will indeed die, and so there is no satisfaction to be gained from [another’s] death: this was revealed because they kept waiting for the Prophet (s) to die.

Then you will indeed, O mankind, concerning the injustices you committed towards one another, be contending before your Lord on the Day of Resurrection.

So who is — in other words, none is — a greater wrongdoer than he who imputes falsehood to God, by ascribing partners and child to Him, and [who] denies the truth, namely, the Qur’ān, when it reaches him? Is there not a [fitting] abode in Hell for the disbelievers? Indeed, there is.

And he who brings the truth — and that is the Prophet (s) — and [those] who confirm it, namely, the believers (here alladhī, ‘he who’, has the significance of alladhīna, ‘those who’), those, they are the ones who guard themselves, against idolatry.

They shall have whatever they wish with their Lord. That is the reward of those who are virtuous, to their own souls through their [acceptance of] faith;

so that God may absolve them of the worst of what they did, and pay them their reward by the best of what they used to do (aswa’a and ahsana mean [simply] al-sayyi’, ‘bad’, and al-hasan, ‘good’).

Does God not suffice [as defender of] His servant?, the Prophet? Indeed, He does. Yet they would frighten you — the address is for him (s) — of those besides Him, namely, the idols, [by telling him] that these [idols] might kill him or render him insane. And whomever God leads astray, for him there is no guide.

But whomever God guides, there is no one [able] to lead him astray. Is not God Mighty, One Whose way [always] prevails, a Lord of Retribution?, against His enemies? Indeed, He is.

And if (wa-la-in: the lām is for oaths) you ask them, ‘Who created the heavens and the earth?’ they will surely say, ‘God.’ Say: ‘Have you considered then those on whom you call, [those whom] you worship, besides God, namely, the idols, if God should desire some harm to befall me, would they [be able to] remove the harm imposed by Him? No! Or if He should desire some mercy for me, would they [be able to] withhold His mercy?’ No! (a variant reading for the two clauses [kāshifātun durrahu and mumsikātun rahmatahu] has the genitive construction [kāshifātu durrihi and mumsikātu rahmatihi). Say: ‘God is sufficient for me. In Him do [all] the trusting put their trust’.

Say: ‘O my people! Act according to your situation, [according to] your circumstances, I [too] am acting, according to my circumstances. For you will [come to] know

to whom (man, introduces the relative clause that is the direct object of [the action of] ‘knowing’) will come a chastisement that will disgrace him and on whom there will descend a lasting chastisement’, an everlasting one, namely, the chastisement of the Fire. Indeed God [then] disgraced them at Badr.

Truly We have revealed the Book to you for [the sake of] mankind with the truth (bi’l-haqqi is semantically connected to anzalnā, ‘We have revealed’). So whoever is guided, then it, his being guided, is for [the sake of] his own soul, and whoever goes astray, goes astray only to the detriment thereof. And you are not [meant to be] a guardian over them, and so compel them to [embrace] guidance.

God takes the souls at the time of their death, and, He takes, those that have not died in their sleep, in other words, He takes them during sleep. Then He retains those for whom He has ordained death and releases the others until an appointed term, that is, until the time of their death. The one that is released is the soul [that possesses the faculty] of discernment, without which the soul [containing the force] of life is able to remain [temporarily] — but this cannot be the other way round. Truly in that, mentioned, there are signs, indications, for a people who reflect, and then realise that the One with the power to do this also has the power to resurrect — Quraysh, however, never reflected on this [fact].

Or have they — nay, but [they have] — taken besides God, idols, as gods [to act as], intercessors?, with God, as they [are wont to] allege. Say, to them: ‘What!, will they intercede, even though they have no power whatever, of intercession or otherwise, and are unable to comprehend?’, that you worship them or [to comprehend] anything else [for that matter]? Nay.

Say: ‘All intercession belongs [solely] to God, that is to say, He has exclusive control over it, and so none can intercede except with His permission. To Him belongs the kingdom of the heavens and the earth; then to Him you will be brought back’.

And when God is mentioned alone, that is, without [the mention of] their gods, thereat shrink, they are repelled and they become constricted, the hearts of those who do not believe in the Hereafter; but when those [others] besides Him, namely, the idols, are mentioned, behold, they rejoice!

Say: ‘O God! (Allāhumma means yā Allāh) Originator of the heavens and the earth!, the Creator of them without precedent, Knower of the Unseen and the visible, [Knower of] what is hidden and what is witnessed, You will judge between Your servants concerning that wherein they used to differ’, in the matter of religion: guide me to the truth over which they are at variance.

And [even] if the evildoers possessed all that is in the earth, and as much of it besides, they would surely offer it to ransom themselves from the terrible chastisement on the Day of Resurrection. And there will appear, [there will become] manifest, to them from God that which they had never reckoned, [what they never] supposed [they would see].

And there will appear to them the evils of what they had earned, and they will be besieged by, there will descend [on them], that which they used to deride, in other words, the chastisement.

So when some distress befalls man (al-insān, here a generic), he supplicates Us. Then, when We bestow on him a grace from Us, he says, ‘I was given it merely by force of knowledge’, from God that I was deserving of it. Nay, but it, this saying, is a trial, a test by which servants are tested. But most of them do not know, that such bestowal [of grace] is a way of drawing [them] on and a test [of their faith].

Already the same was said by those who were before them, of communities, such as Korah and those of his people who were content with such [a saying]. But what they used to earn did not avail them.

So the evils of what they earned smote them, that is, the requital thereof [smote them]. And the evildoers among these, namely, [among] Quraysh, shall also be smitten by the evils of what they earned, and they will not be able to thwart it: [they will not] elude Our chastisement — thus they were made to suffer seven years of drought and [only] afterwards were they enriched [with provision from God].

Do they not know that God extends His provision, [that He] makes it abundant, for whomever He will, as a test, and restricts [it]?, for whomever He will, as a trial? Truly in that there are signs for a people who believe, in Him.

Say [that God declares]: ‘O My servants who have been prodigal against their own souls, do not despair (read taqnitū, taqnatū, or taqnutū), do not give up hope, of God’s mercy. Truly God forgives all sins, for those who repent from idolatry. Truly He is the Forgiving, the Merciful.

And turn, return, [penitently] to your Lord and submit, perform deeds sincerely, to Him, before the chastisement comes on you, whereupon you will not be helped, to ward it off, if you have not repented.

And follow the best of what has been revealed to you from your Lord — namely, the Qur’ān — before the chastisement comes on you suddenly while you are unaware’, of the time [of its arrival] until it has [actually] come;

so apply yourselves to this, before any soul should say, ‘Alas for me (yā hasratā is actually yā hasratī, meaning ‘O regret of mine’) for what I have neglected of my duty to God, in other words, [of] obedience to Him. Indeed (wa-in: in is softened in place of the hardened form, in other words [understand it as] wa-innī) I was among those who ridiculed’, His religion and His Book;

or [before] that it should say, ‘If only God had guided me, to obedience and I had become guided, I would have been among those who have feared’, His chastisement;

or [before] that it should say, when it sees the chastisement, ‘If only there had been a second chance, a return to this world, I would be among the virtuous’, the believers. It is then said to him by God:

‘Yes indeed! My signs came to you, the Qur’ān — which is the means to guidance — but you denied them and were arrogant, you disdained to believe in them, and you were among the disbelievers’.

And on the Day of Resurrection you will see those who imputed lies to God, by ascribing partner and child to Him, with their faces blackened. Is there not in Hell a [fitting] abode for those who are [too] arrogant?, to believe? Indeed [there is].

And God will deliver, from Hell, those who fear, idolatry, because of their triumph, that is, on account of the place they have won in Paradise, by placing them in it. No evil will touch them, nor will they grieve.

God is the Creator of all things and He is Guardian over all things, disposing of them as He will.

To Him belong the keys of the heavens and the earth, in other words, the keys to their storehouses of rain and vegetation and other things. And those who disbelieve in the signs of God, [such as] the Qur’ān — those, they are the losers (ūlā’ika humu’l-khāsirūna is semantically connected to His words wa-yunajjī’Llāhu’lladhīna ittaqaw, ‘and God will deliver those who guarded themselves …’ to the end [of that statement]; the intervening statements are parentheticals).

Say: ‘Is it [something] other than God that you bid me to worship, O you who are ignorant?’ (ghayra is in the accusative because of [the verb] a‘budu, ‘I worship’, which itself is operated by ta’murūnī, ‘you bid me’, read with one nūn on the basis of an implicit an; it [ta’murūnī] may also be read with two nūns assimilated [ta’murūnnī] or separated [ta’murūnanī]).

And certainly it has been revealed to you and to those before you [that], by God!, if you associate others [with God], O Muhammad (s) — hypothetically — your work shall surely fail and you shall surely be among the losers’.

Rather, worship God, alone, and be among the thankful, of His bestowal of graces on you.

And they do not esteem God as He should be esteemed, they do not understand His true nature, or [it means] that they do not exalt Him with the exaltation truly worthy of Him, when they associate others with Him. And the entire earth (jamī‘an is a circumstantial qualifier) in other words, the seven [earths], will be in His grasp, in other words, it shall be grasped by Him, meaning [that it will be] in His possession and at His disposal, on the Day of Resurrection, and the heavens will be rolled up, brought together, in His Right Hand, by His power. Glory be to Him! And exalted be He above what they associate!, with Him [of partners].

And the Trumpet will be blown, for the First Blast, and whoever is in the heavens and whoever is in the earth will swoon, will die, except whomever God wills, such as the houris, the beautiful youths [of Paradise] and others. Then it will be blown again, and behold, they, that is, all creatures who are dead, will rise up, looking on, waiting to see what will be done with them.

And the earth will shine with the light of its Lord, when God reveals Himself for the passing of judgement, and the Book, of deeds, shall be set in place, for the Reckoning, and the prophets and witnesses, namely, Muhammad (s) and his community, will be brought, to bear witness that the messengers delivered [the Message to their respective communities]. And judgement will be made between them with truth, in other words, justly, and they will not be wronged, in a single thing.

And every soul will be paid in full for what it did, that is, [it will be paid] the requital thereof, and He is best aware of what they do, and has no need for any witnesses.

And those who disbelieve will be driven, violently, to Hell in troops, in separate groups, until, when they reach it, its gates are opened (futihat abwābuhā is the response to idhā, ‘when’) and its keepers will say to them, ‘Did there not come to you [any] messengers from among yourselves, reciting to you the signs of your Lord, the Qur’ān and otherwise, and warning you of the encounter of this day of yours?’ They will say, ‘Yes, indeed; but the word of chastisement — namely, the verse: Assuredly I will fill Hell … [Q. 11:119] — against the disbelievers has been fulfilled’.

It will be said, ‘Enter the gates of Hell to abide therein’ — decreed for you to abide [therein]. For evil [indeed] is the abode of the arrogant!’

And those who feared their Lord will be driven, gently, to Paradise in troops, until, when they reach it, and its gates are opened (wa-futihat: the wāw here indicates a circumstantial qualifier, implying qad, ‘already’) and its keepers will say to them, ‘Peace be to you! You are good! (tibtum, a circumstantial qualifier) So enter it to abide [therein]’ — [enter it] with the decree that you are to abide in it [forever] (the response to idhā, ‘when’, is implicit and is, in other words, dakhalūhā, ‘they enter it’). [The manner of] their being driven as well as the opening of the gates before their arrival is a way of honouring them; the driving of the disbelievers, however, and the opening of the gates only upon their arrival so that [all of] its heat is retained for them, is a means of humiliating them.

And they will say: (this is a supplement to the implicit [response] dakhalūhā, ‘they enter it’) ‘Praise be to God, Who has fulfilled His promise to us, of Paradise, and has made us inherit the land, the land of Paradise, that we may settle in Paradise wherever we wish’, for it is all [Paradise], and there is no spot that can be preferred to another. So how excellent is, Paradise [as], the reward of those who worked [hard]!

And you will see the angels encircling (hāffīna, a circumstantial qualifier) all round the Throne, from its every side, glorifying (yusabbihūn is a circumstantial qualifier referring to the person [of the participle] hāffīn) with praise of their Lord, continuously proclaiming [His] praise — in other words, saying subhāna’Llāhi wa-bi-hamdih, ‘Glory, and praise, be to God!’ — and judgement will be made between them, that is, between all creatures, with truth, in other words, [with] justice, so that believers enter Paradise while the disbelievers enter the Fire, and it will be said, ‘Praise be to God, the Lord of the Worlds!’ — the [final] establishing of both groups [in their respective abodes] is concluded with [this] angelic praise.

Hā mīm: God knows best what He means by these [letters].

The revelation of the Book, the Qur’ān (tanzīlu’l-kitābi is the subject), is from God (mina’Llāhi is its predicate), the Mighty, in His kingdom, the Knower, of His creatures.

Forgiver of sins, for believers, and Accepter of repentance, from them (al-tawb is the verbal noun), Severe in punishment, of disbelievers — in other words, One Who makes it severe for them — One of [abundant] bounty, bestower of abundant grace — God is eternally possessed of all of these attributes, and so the annexation construction using the derivatives [of these attributes] is for the purposes of characterisation, as in the case of the last. There is no god except Him; to Him is the journeying, the [ultimate] return.

None dispute the signs of God — the Qur’ān — except those who disbelieve, from among the people of Mecca, so do not be deceived by their bustle in the towns, [going about] seeking their livelihood in security, for the sequel for them will be the Fire.

The people of Noah denied before them and [also] the factions, such as ‘Ād, Thamūd and others, [who came] after them. And every community sought to seize their messenger, to slay him, and they argued falsely [thinking] to rebut, to eliminate, thereby the truth. Then I seized them, with punishment; so how [fitting] was My punishment!, of them — in other words, it was appropriate.

And thus was the word of your Lord — namely, the verse: Assuredly I will fill Hell … [Q. 11:119] — fulfilled against those who disbelieve: that they shall be the inhabitants of the Fire (annahum ashābu’l-nāri substitutes for kalimatu, ‘the word’).

Those who bear the Throne (alladhīna yahmilūna’l-‘arsha is the subject) and those around it (wa-man hawlahu is a supplement to that [subject]) glorify (yusabbihūna, is the predicate thereof) with praise of their Lord, continuously proclaiming praise, in other words, [continuously] saying: subhāna’Llāhi wa-bi-hamdihi, ‘Glory, and praise, be to God’; and they believe in Him, exalted be He, through their power of discernment, in other words, they affirm the truth of His Oneness, and they ask forgiveness for those who believe, saying: ‘Our Lord, You embrace all things in [Your] mercy and knowledge, that is to say, Your mercy embraces all things and Your knowledge [also embraces] all things. So forgive those who repent, of idolatry, and follow Your way — the religion of Islam — and shield them from the chastisement of Hell-fire, that is, the Fire.

Our Lord, and admit them into the Gardens of Eden, as [a place of] residence [for them], that which You have promised them, along with whoever were righteous (wa-man salaha is a supplement [either] to [the pronominal third person plural suffix] hum, ‘them’ in wa-adkhilhum, ‘and admit them’, or in wa‘adttahum, ‘You have promised them’) among their fathers and their wives and their descendants. Surely You are the One Who is the Mighty, the Wise, in what He does.

And shield them from evil deeds, that is, [from] the chastisement thereof; for whomever You shield from evil deeds that day, the Day of Resurrection, verily him You will have had been merciful to; and that is indeed the supreme triumph’.

Indeed to those who disbelieve it will be proclaimed [to them], from the part of the angels, as they [disbelievers] enter the Fire in utter loathing of themselves: ‘Surely God’s loathing, of you, is greater than your loathing of yourselves, as you were called, [during life] in this world, to faith but you used to disbelieve’.

They will say, ‘Our Lord, You have caused us to die twice, two deaths, and You have given us life twice — for they were lifeless drops of semen, then they were given life, then made to die, then brought back to life for the Resurrection. We [now] confess our sins, in having disbelieved in the Resurrection. Is there then any way to go out?’, out of the Fire and return to the world to be obedient to our Lord? The answer given to them will be: No!

That, namely, the chastisement which you find yourselves in, is because, during [the life of] this world, when God was invoked alone, you would disbelieve, in His Oneness; but if partners were ascribed to Him, you would believe, you would accept such idolatry. So the judgement, to chastise you, belongs to God, the Exalted, above His creation, the Great, the Tremendous.

He it is Who shows you His signs, the proofs of His Oneness, and sends down from the heaven for you provision, by way of rain. Yet no one remembers, [no one] is admonished, except him who returns penitently, [who] recants idolatry.

So supplicate God, worship Him, devoting [your] religion purely to Him, [free] from any idolatry, however much the disbelievers be averse, to its being free of such [idolatry].

Exalter of ranks, [either means] that God is One Whose attributes are majestic — or [it means] the raiser of the ranks of believers in Paradise — Lord of the Throne, in other words, the Creator thereof, He casts the Spirit, the Revelation, of His command, that is, [of] His words, upon whomever He will of His servants, that he, the one upon whom it is cast, may warn them of, [that he may] make people fear, the Day of Encounter (read yawma’l-talāqi, omitting the [final long] yā’, or yawma’l-talāqī), that is to say, the Day of Resurrection, [so called] because thereat the inhabitants of the heavens will encounter those of the earth, and the worshipper [will encounter] the one whom he worshipped, and the wrongdoer [will encounter] the person whom he wronged;

the day when they will emerge, [the day] they will exit from their graves; nothing about them will be hidden from God. ‘To whom does Sovereignty belong today?’ — God, exalted be He, asks this and Himself responds — ‘To God, the One, the All-compelling!’, over His creatures.

Today every soul shall be requited for what it has earned; there will be no injustice today. Indeed God is swift at reckoning’, reckoning with all of creation in the space of half a day of the days of this world — a hadīth states this.

And warn them of the Impending Day, namely, the Day of Resurrection (al-azifa, as in azifa al-rahīlu, ‘departure is very near’) when the hearts will, rising up in fear, reach the throats, choking with anguish, filled with [suppressed] anxiety (kāzimīna is a circumstantial qualifier referring to al-qulūbu, ‘the hearts’, which is qualified by the [active animate participle] plural [kāzimīna] and referred to as though they were the very individuals themselves). The evildoers will not have any intimate [friend], [any] sympathiser, nor any intercessor who might be heeded — the adjectival qualification [‘who might be heeded’] has no [literal] significance, for they do not have intercessors in the first place: So [now] we have no intercessors … [Q. 26:100]. The first part, however, may [be said to] have significance if [understand] on the basis of their claim to have intercessors, and so, in other words, even if — hypothetically speaking — they [their intercessors] did intercede for them, they would not be heeded.

He, namely, God, knows the treachery of the eyes, when it steals a glance at what is prohibited [for it to look at], and what the breasts hide — [what] the hearts [hide].

And God decrees with truth, while those on whom they call, whom they worship, that is, the disbelievers of Mecca (read yad‘ūna, ‘they call’, or tad‘ūna, ‘you call’) besides Him — and these are the idols — do not decree by any means [at all]: so how can they be God’s associates? Truly God is the Hearer, of their sayings, the Seer, of their actions.

Have they not travelled in the land and beheld the nature of the consequence for those who were before them? They were more powerful than them (a variant reading has minkum, ‘than yourselves’) in strength and in [their] vestiges on earth, in the way of large structures and palaces. Yet God seized them, He destroyed them, for their sins and they had none to shield them from God, from His chastisement.

That was because their messengers used to bring them clear signs, manifest miracles, but they disbelieved. So God seized them. Indeed He is Strong, Severe in punishment.

And verily We sent Moses with Our signs and a clear warrant, an evident and manifest proof,

to Pharaoh and Hāmān and Korah, but they said — that he was — ‘A sorcerer, a [mere] liar!’

So when he brought them the truth from Us, they said, ‘Slay the sons of those who believe with him, and spare, keep alive, their women’. But the guile of the disbelievers is ever in error, in perdition.

And Pharaoh said, ‘Let me slay Moses — for they used to restrain him from slaying him — and let him call to his Lord, to defend him against me. Indeed I fear that he may change your religion, [involving] your worship of me, so that you will then follow him [in his religion], or that he may cause corruption to appear in the land’, by [initiating] killing and otherwise (a variant reading [for wa-an, ‘and that’] is aw-an, ‘or that’; a variant reading [for an yuzhira fī’l-ardi’l-fasāda] is [the impersonal construction] an yazhara fī’l-ardi’l-fasādu, ‘that corruption may appear in the land’).

And Moses said, to his people, after he had heard that [saying of Pharaoh]: ‘Indeed I seek refuge in my Lord and your Lord from every arrogant one who does not believe in the Day of Reckoning’.

Then said a believing man from among Pharaoh’s folk — this is said to have been his paternal cousin — who had concealed his faith, ‘Will you slay a man for saying, “My Lord is God”, even though he has [also] brought you clear signs, manifest miracles, from your Lord? If he is lying, then his mendacity will be to his own detriment, that is, the harm resulting from his mendacity [will be to his own detriment]; but if he is truthful, then there will befall you some of that with which he is threatening you, in the way of chastisement, soon. Truly God does not guide one who is a prodigal, an idolater, a liar.

O my people! Today the kingdom is yours: [you are] dominant, prevailing (zāhirīna, a circumstantial qualifier) in the land, the land of Egypt. But who will help us against the might of God, [against] His chastisement, if you [resolve to] slay His friends, should it reach us?’ In other words, we would have no helper. Pharaoh said, ‘I only point out to you what I see [to be best], that is to say, I only suggest to you what I suggest to myself, and that is, to kill Moses [would be best]; and I am only guiding you to the path of rectitude’, [to] the correct way.

Then said he who believed, ‘O my people! Truly I fear for you [a day] like the day of the factions, in other words, the day of one faction [being destroyed] after another;

like the case of the people of Noah, and ‘Ād, and Thamūd, and those [who came] after them (mithla, ‘like’, substitutes for the previous mithla, ‘like’) in other words, the same requital as was customarily dealt to those who disbelieved before you, of their being chastised in this world, and God does not desire to wrong [any of] His servants.

And O my people! Truly I fear for you a day of [mutual] calling (read yawma’l-tanādi, omitting the [final long] yā’, or retaining it thus: yawma’l-tanādī) that is to say, the Day of Resurrection, in which repeated calls are made by those meriting Paradise to those meriting the Fire and vice versa, as well as calls [proclaiming] good fortune for those who merit the former and misery for those who merit the latter and [many] other such [calls],

a day when you will turn back to flee, from the site of the Reckoning [leading] to the Fire, not having anyone to defend you, to protect you, from God, in other words, from His chastisement, and whomever God leads astray, for him there is no guide.

And verily Joseph brought you, before, in other words, before Moses — according to one opinion, this Joseph is the son of Jacob, having been given life until the time of Moses; according to another opinion this is Joseph son of Abraham son of Joseph son of Jacob — clear signs, manifest miracles, but you continued to be in doubt concerning what he had brought you until, when he died, you said, without any evidence [to support such a claim]: “God will never send any messenger after him” — in other words, you will never cease to disbelieve in Joseph and others [that may come after him]. So, that is, just as you have been led astray, God leads astray one who is a prodigal, an idolater, a skeptic’, a doubter of that which the clear signs have certified.

Those who dispute the signs of God, His miracles (alladhīna yujādilūna fī āyāti’Llāhi, the subject) without any warrant, any evidence, that has come to them — greatly hateful [is that], disputing of theirs (kabura, the predicate of the subject) in the sight of God and in the sight of those who believe. So, just as they have been led astray, God sets a seal, of misguidance, on the heart of every arrogant tyrant (read qalbin, ‘the heart of’, with nunation, or without, qalbi). As the heart grows arrogant, so does the individual and vice versa (kulli, in both readings, is meant to indicate the totality of the misguidance of such hearts, not the totality of the hearts).

And Pharaoh said, ‘O Hāmān! Build for me a tower, a lofty edifice, that perhaps I may reach the routes —

the routes of the heavens — the paths that lead to it, and look upon (read [indicative] fa-attali‘u as a supplement to ablughu, ‘I may reach’; or read [subjunctive] fa-attali‘a, as the response to ibni lī, ‘build for me’) the God of Moses; for I truly think that he, that is, Moses, is lying’, about his having a god other than me — Pharaoh said this in order to disguise [the truth]. And that is how the evil [nature] of his conduct was made to seem fair to Pharaoh, and [that is how] he was barred from the [right] way, the path to guidance (read sadda, ‘[that is how] he barred [others]’, or sudda, ‘[that is how] he was barred’). And Pharaoh’s guile ended only in ruin, loss.

And he who believed, ‘O my people! Follow me (read ittabi‘ūnī, with the [final long] yā’, or ittabi‘ūni, without); I will guide you to the way of rectitude ([a similar statement] has already been mentioned [verse 29, above]).

O my people! Truly this life of the world is only an [ephemeral] enjoyment, [containing] comforts which will [eventually] disappear, whereas the Hereafter truly is the enduring abode.

Whoever commits an evil deed shall not be requited except with the like of it; but whoever acts righteously, whether male or female, and is a believer — such shall be admitted into Paradise (read [passive] yudkhalūna, or the opposite [active yadkhulūna, ‘they shall enter’) wherein they will be provided without any reckoning, an abundant provision, [given to them] unconditionally.

And O my people! [Think] what makes me call you to deliverance when you call me to the Fire?

You call me to disbelieve in God and to associate with Him that whereof I have no knowledge, whereas I call you to the Mighty, Whose way [always] prevails, the Forgiver, to those who repent.

No doubt, verily, that to which you call me, to worship, has no call [that is heard], in other words, [has no] call answered, in this world or in the Hereafter, and indeed our return will be to God, and indeed the prodigal, the disbelievers, it is they who will be the inhabitants of the Fire.

For you will [soon] remember what I have said to you, when you see the chastisement with your own eyes. And I entrust my affair to God. Truly God is Seer of [His] servants’ — he said this after they threatened him [with retribution] for opposing their religion.

So God shielded him from the evils of what they had plotted, against him, in the way of killing [him], and there besieged, befell, the folk of Pharaoh, his people as well as him, a dreadful chastisement, drowning,

then: the Fire, to which they are exposed, in which they are burnt, morning and evening. And on the day when the Hour comes, it will be said: ‘Enter, O, folk of Pharaoh (a variant reading [for udkhulū, ‘enter’] has adkhilū, ‘admit’, being a command to the angels) the most awful chastisement!’, the chastisement of Hell.

And, mention, when they will be arguing, [when] they, the disbelievers, will be disputing, [with one another] in the Fire, and the weak will say to those who were arrogant, ‘Indeed we were your followers (taba‘an is the plural of tābi‘); so will you [now] avail, [will you] defend, us against any portion of the Fire?’

Those who were arrogant will say, ‘Indeed we are all [together] in it. God has indeed judged [fairly] between His servants’, admitting believers into Paradise and disbelievers into the Fire.

And those who are in the Fire will say to the keepers of Hell, ‘Call on your Lord that He relieve us of [at least] a day, in other words, the equivalent of one day, of the chastisement!’

They, that is, the keepers, will say, mockingly: ‘Did not your messengers bring you clear signs?’, manifest miracles? They will say, ‘Yes indeed’ — in other words, they disbelieved them. They will say, ‘Then supplicate [God]!’, yourselves, for we do not intercede for disbelievers. God, exalted be He, says: but the supplications of the disbelievers can only be misguided, void.

Truly We shall help Our messengers and those who believe, in the life of this world and on the day when the witnesses rise up (ashhād is the plural of shāhid) — these are the angels, who will testify in support of the messengers, that they indeed delivered [their Messages], and against the disbelievers, that they denied [them];

the day when their excuses will not benefit (read lā yanfa‘u, or lā tanfa‘u) the evildoers, [even] if they were to offer them, and theirs will be the curse, in other words, the banishment from [God’s] Mercy, and theirs will be the ills of the [ultimate] abode, in the Hereafter, meaning, the most severe of its chastisements.

And verily We gave Moses the guidance, the Torah and miracles, and We made the Children of Israel, after Moses, heirs to the scripture, the Torah,

as a guidance, to guide, and as a remembrance for people of pith, a reminder for possessors of intellect.

So be patient, O Muhammad (s). Surely God’s promise, to grant victory to His friends, is true — for you and whoever follows you are among such [friends]. And ask forgiveness for your sin, so that you will be emulated in this [by your community], and glorify, perform prayer, continuously, with praise of your Lord at night — which means after sunset — and in the early hours: the five prayers.

Truly those who dispute the signs of God, the Qur’ān, without any warrant, any evidence, that has come to them — there is only vanity in their breasts, [only] arrogance and an [evil] desire to get the better of you, which they will never attain [and satisfy]. So seek refuge with God, from their evil. Surely He is the Hearer, of their sayings, the Seer, of their state.

The following was revealed regarding the deniers of resurrection: Assuredly the creation of the heavens and the earth, as an [unprecedented] first act, is greater than the creation of mankind, a second time — which is the restoration [of them after death]; but most people, namely, the disbelievers of Mecca, do not know, this, and so they are like the blind, whereas those who know it are like those who have sight.

And the blind one and the seer are not equal; nor are [they equal] those who believe and perform righteous deeds — such a person being the virtuous one — and the evildoer (wa-lā’l-musī’u: lā here is extra). Little do they reflect, [little] are they admonished (read yatadhakkarūna, or [second person plural] tatadhakkarūna, ‘do you reflect’), in other words, their reflections are very few.

Truly the Hour is coming; there is no doubt in it. But most people do not believe, in it.

And your Lord has said, ‘Call on Me and I will respond to you, in other words, worship Me and I will reward you — judging [this to be the meaning] by what follows. Surely those who disdain to worship Me shall enter (sa-yadkhulūna, or [passive] sa-yudkhalūna, ‘they shall be admitted into’) Hell [utterly] humiliated’, abased.

God it is Who made for you night that you may rest in it, and day for seeing — the attribution of sight (ibsār) to ‘day’ is figurative, and it is [so attributed] because one is able to see in it. Surely God is a Lord of bounty to mankind, but most people are not thankful, to God, and so they do not believe.

That then is God, your Lord, the Creator of all things; there is no god except Him. How then are you made to deviate?, how then are you turned away from faith, despite the evidence having been established [for it]?

So deviate, that is, in the same way that these [Meccans] deviate, deviate, those who used to deny the signs of God, His miracles.

God it is Who made for you the earth as a [stable] abode and the heaven as a canopy, a ceiling. And He formed you and perfected your forms, and provided you with [all] the wholesome things. That then is God, your Lord, so blessed be God, the Lord of the Worlds.

He is the Living; there is no god except Him. So supplicate Him, worship Him, devoting [your] religion purely to Him, [free] from any idolatry. Praise be to God, the Lord of the Worlds.

Say: ‘I have been forbidden to worship those on whom you call, [those whom] you worship, besides God, since there have come to me clear signs, proofs of His Oneness, from my Lord; and I have been commanded to submit to the Lord of the Worlds’.

He it is Who created you from dust, by having created your father Adam from it, then from a drop [of sperm], then from a blood-clot, congealed blood, then He brings you forth as infants, then, He sustains you, that you may come of age, [until you have attained] your full strength — [this being] from the age of thirty to forty — then that you may become aged (read shuyūkhan or shiyūkhan)— though there are some of you who die earlier, that is, before coming of age or becoming aged. He does this to you so that you may live [on], and that you may complete an appointed term, a defined length of time, that perhaps you might understand, the proofs of [His] Oneness and thus become believers.

He it is Who gives life and brings death. So when He decides upon a matter, [when] He wants to bring something into existence, He only says to it ‘Be!’ and it is (read fa-yakūnu, or fa-yakūna [in the subjunctive] on account of an implied [preceding] an). In other words, it comes into existence after He has willed it, that which is signified by the said words.

Have you not regarded those who dispute the signs of God, the Qur’ān, how they are turned away?, from faith —

those who deny the Book, the Qur’ān, and that wherewith We have sent Our messengers, in the way of the affirmation of [God’s] Oneness and [belief in] the Resurrection — and these [deniers] are the Meccan disbelievers. But they will come to know, the punishment for their denials;

when (idh has the meaning of idhā) [with] fetters around their necks and chains (wa’l-salāsilu, a supplement to al-aghlālu, ‘fetters’, so that the meaning is that these [chains] are also around their necks; or it [al-salāsilu, ‘chains’] is the subject, the predicate of which has been omitted, in other words [the meaning being]: around their feet [will be these chains] — or [alternatively] its predicate is [the following, yushabūna]), they are dragged, in other words, they are dragged away by these [chains].

into the boiling water, that is, [into] Hell, then in the Fire they are set aflame.

Then it will be said to them, in reproach: ‘Where are those whom you used to make partners,

besides God?’, alongside Him, and these are the idols. They will say, ‘They have forsaken, abandoned, us, and so we cannot see them. Nay, but [actually] we were not invoking anything before’. They deny that they used to worship these [idols]; but then these [idols] are brought [before them] — [which is where] God, exalted be He, says: ‘Truly you and what you worship besides God shall be fuel for Hell’ [Q. 21:98]). So, in the same way that these disbelievers have been led astray, God leads astray the disbelievers.

And it will also be said to them: ‘That, chastisement, is because you used to exult in the earth without right, by [your] idolatry and denial of resurrection, and because you were insolent, committing acts of disobedience in abundance.

Enter the gates of Hell, to abide therein’. Evil then is the [ultimate] abode of the arrogant!

So be patient. Assuredly God’s promise, to chastise them, is true. And if We show you (fa-immā contains an assimilated conditional particle in; the mā is extra and emphasises the conditional import at the beginning of the verb, while the nūn emphasises it at the end) a part of what We promise them, of chastisement, in your lifetime (the response to the conditional has been omitted, in other words [it is something like]: ‘then so be it!’) … or We take you unto Us [in death], before their chastisement, then [in any case] to Us they will be returned, whereupon We shall chastise them with the most severe punishment (this [last] mentioned response is that of the supplement only).

And verily We sent messengers before you. Of them are those whom We have recounted to you, and of them are those whom We have not recounted to you: it is reported that God, exalted be He, sent 8,000 prophets, 4,000 prophets [sent] from among the Children of Israel and [the other] 4,000 from among the remainder of mankind. And it was never [permitted] for any messenger, from among them, to bring a sign except with God’s permission, for they are [also] servants enthralled [by Him]. Hence when God’s command comes, for the chastisement to be sent down on the disbelievers, judgement, between the messengers and their deniers, is passed justly; and it is thence that the advocates of falsehood become losers, that is to say, [it is thence that] the judgement and the loss become manifest for mankind, although such [advocates of falsehood] will have always been losers always before that.

God it is Who made for you cattle — it is said that ‘camels’ are specifically meant here, even though it seems to signify cows and sheep also — that you may ride some of them and eat of some.

And there are [other] uses for you in them, such as [their] milk, offspring, fur and wool, and that by them you may satisfy any need that is in your breasts, namely, to transport heavy loads to [other] lands, and on them, on land, and on the ships, in the sea, you are carried.

And He shows you His signs. So which of God’s signs, that is, [the signs] that prove His Oneness, do you reject? (the interrogative here is meant as a rebuke; ayya, ‘which of’ is more commonly made masculine than feminine).

Have they not travelled across the land to see the nature of the consequence for those before them? They were more powerful than them in might and in [their] vestiges on earth, in the way of large structures and palaces. But what they used to earn did not avail them.

And when their messengers brought them clear signs, manifest miracles, they, the disbelievers, exulted in the knowledge they, the messengers, possessed, an exultation that entailed mockery and amusement, as they rejected such [knowledge], and there besieged, befell, them that which they used to deride, namely, the chastisement.

Then, when they saw Our doom, that is, the severity of Our chastisement, they said, ‘We believe in God alone, and we disavow what we used to associate with Him’.

But their faith was of no benefit to them when they saw Our doom — [This is] God’s way (sunnata’Llāhi is in the accusative because it functions as a verbal noun from an implicit verb of the same expression) with the believers, among all communities, which is that faith is of no benefit to them once the chastisement has been sent down, which has its precdent; and it is thence that the disbelievers will be losers — [it is thence that] their status as losers will become apparent to all [of mankind], even though they will have always been losers before that.

Hā mīm: God knows best what He means by these [letters].

A revelation from the Compassionate, the Merciful (tanzīlun mina’l-rahmāni’l-rahīm, the subject).

A Book (kitābun, the predicate thereof) whose signs have been set out in detail, [whose signs have been] expounded through [various] rulings, stories and admonitions, as an Arabic Qur’ān (qur’ānan ‘arabiyyan, a circumstantial qualifier referring to kitābun, ‘a Book’, by qualifying it adjectivally) for a people (li-qawmin is semantically connected to fussilat, ‘set out in detail’) who have knowledge, [who] understand this [fact] — and they are the Arabs;

[containing] good tidings (bashīran is an adjective describing qur’ānan, ‘a Qur’ān’) and a warning. But most of them turn away so that they do not hear, in a way so as to accept [its message].

And they say, to the Prophet, ‘Our hearts are veiled, [they are] masked, from that to which you call us, and in our ears there is a deafness and between us and you there is a partition, a variance over religion, so act, according to your religion; indeed we shall be acting!’, according to our religion.

Say: ‘I am only a human being like you. It has been revealed to me [simply] that your God is One God. So be upright [in your conduct] before Him, through faith and obedience, and seek forgiveness from Him. And woe (waylun is an expression implying ‘chastisement’) to the idolaters,

who do not pay the alms and who are disbelievers in the Hereafter ([the repetition of] hum, ‘they’, is for emphasis).

Indeed those who believe and perform righteous deeds shall have an enduring reward’, [one that is] unceasing.

Say: ‘Do you [really] (read a-innakum, pronouncing both hamzas, or by not pronouncing the second one but inserting an alif between the two in both cases) disbelieve in Him Who created the earth in two days, Sunday and Monday, and ascribe to Him associates? That is the Lord, in other words, the Possesser, of [all] the Worlds (al-‘ālamīn, the plural of ‘ālam, which denotes everything apart from God. On account of the variety [of beings] that it subsumes, it has been expressed in the plural form ending with –īn, as a way of giving prevalence [in the address] to rational beings).

And He set (wa-ja‘ala, the beginning of a new [independent] sentence and cannot be a supplement to [the preceding] relative clause containing alladhī, ‘Who’, because of the intervening clause that is [syntactically] unrelated) therein firm mountains [rising] above it, and blessed it, with an abundance of water, crops and stock, and ordained, divided, therein its [various means of] sustenance, for human beings and beasts, in four, complete, days — in other words, the ‘setting therein [of mountains]’ together with what has been mentioned in addition [all] took place on Tuesday and Wednesday — evenly (sawā’an, in the accusative because it is a verbal noun) in other words, the four days were exactly four, neither less nor more, for [all] enquirers, about the creation of the earth and all that is in it.

Then He turned to the heaven when it was smoke, [consisting of] rising vapours, and He said to it and to the earth, “Come both of you, to what I desire from you, willingly, or unwillingly!” (taw‘an aw karhan, their [syntactical] locus is that of a circumstantial qualifier, in other words, ‘[Come] being obedient or coerced’). They said, “We come, together with all those inhabiting us, willingly!” (tā’i‘īna mainly indicates masculine rational beings; it may also be that they are referred to in this way because they are being addressed thus).

Then He ordained them (the [suffixed] pronoun refers back to al-samā’, ‘the heaven’, because it [al-samā’] actually denotes that plural [sense] to which it will lead [in the following clause), in other words, He made them to be, seven heavens in two days — Thursday and Friday. He completed them in the last hour thereof, in which He created Adam — which is why He does not say sawā’an, ‘evenly’ here [as He did earlier]; what is said here concords with those verse in which it is stated that the heavens and the earth were created in six days; and in each heaven He revealed its commandment’, that to which He commanded those in it [to follow], in the way of obedience and worship. And We adorned the lowest heaven with lamps, with stars, and [this was also] to guard them (hifzan is in the accusative because of its implicit verbal sense, in other words, ‘We guarded it against the devils lest they try to listen therein [to the angels] by stealth with meteors’). That is the ordaining of the Mighty, in His kingdom, the Knower, of His creatures.

But if they, that is, the Meccan disbelievers, turn away, from belief, after this clear statement, then say, ‘I warn you of, I threaten you [with], a thunderbolt like the thunderbolt of ‘Ād and Thamūd’, in other words, a chastisement that will destroy you like the one that destroyed them.

When the messengers came to them from in front of them and from behind them, that is, coming to them [to warn them] and leaving them behind [as they departed], but they disbelieved, as will be stated shortly — the destruction [of them meant] would only take place in his time — saying, ‘Worship none but God’, they said, ‘Had our Lord willed, He would have surely sent down, to us, angels; therefore we indeed disbelieve in what you, according to your claim, have been sent with!’

As for ‘Ād, they acted arrogantly in the earth without right, and they said, upon their being threatened with the chastisement, ‘Who is more powerful than us in might?’, in other words, [they believed] no one [to be so] — a single man among them could pull out a huge rock from a mountainside and [have the strength to] place it wherever he wished. Did they not see, [did they not] realise, that God, He Who created them, was more powerful than them in might? And they used to deny Our signs, the miracles [We sent down].

So We unleashed upon them a raging wind, cold and violent, but without rain, during [some] ill-fated days (read nahisātin, or nahsātin), [days that were] calamitous for them, that We might make them taste the chastisement of disgrace, humiliation, in the life of this world; yet the chastisement of the Hereafter is indeed more disgraceful, more severe, and they will not be helped, to have it warded off from them.

And as for Thamūd, We offered them guidance, We pointed out to them the path of guidance, but they preferred blindness, they chose disbelief [as opposed], to guidance. So the thunderbolt of the humiliating chastisement seized them on account of what they used to earn.

And We delivered, from it, those who believed and feared, God.

And, mention, the day when God’s enemies are gathered ([read either] yuhsharu a‘dā’u’Llāhi, or nahshuru a‘dā’a’Llāhi, ‘[when] We gather God’s enemies’) to the Fire, for they will be driven [thereto],

until, when they reach it (idhā mā: the mā is extra), their hearing and their eyes and their skins will bear witness against them concerning what they used to do.

And they will say to their skins, ‘Why did you bear witness against us?’ They will say, ‘God made us speak, Who gave speech to all things, in other words, [all things] which He wanted to [be able to] speak. And He created you the first time, and to Him you will be returned: it is said that this statement is made by their skins; but it is also said to be God’s words, as is the case with what follows, for it is similar in context to what preceded, namely, that the One with the power to originate you without any precedent and restore you to life after death, also has the power to make your skins and your limbs speak.

And you did not use to conceal yourselves, when you used to commit lewd acts, lest your hearing or your eyes or your skins should bear witness against you, because you were never certain about [the truth of] resurrection; but you thought, when you used to conceal yourselves, that God did not know most of what you did.

And that (wa-dhālikum, the subject) supposition of yours (zannukum, substitutes for it) which you supposed of your Lord (alladhī zanantum bi-rabbikum, a descriptive clause; the predicate [is the following, ardākum]) has ruined you, that is, it has brought about your destruction. So you have become among the losers’.

So if they endure, the chastisement, the Fire will [still] be their abode; and if they seek reconciliation, if they seek the satisfaction [of God], then they will not be among the reconciled, those deemed satisfactory [by God].

And We have assigned, We have occasioned [for], them companions, from among the devils, who have adorned for them that which is before them, of what concerns this world and the following after lusts, and that which is behind them, of what concerns the Hereafter, when they [make them] say that there will be neither resurrection nor reckoning. And the word, of chastisement — namely, the verse: Assuredly I will fill Hell … [Q. 11:119]) — became due against them, being among, all those, communities that passed away, [that] were destroyed, before them of jinn and mankind. Truly they were losers.

And those who disbelieve say, during the Prophet’s (s) recitation [of the Qur’ān], ‘Do not listen to this Qur’ān and hoot it down, make a din and so forth, and clamour whenever he is reciting, that perhaps you might prevail’, so that he will then desist from recitation.

God, exalted be He, says regarding them: But verily We will make those who disbelieve taste a severe chastisement, and We will verily requite them the worst of what they used to do, in other words, [with] the worst requital for their deeds.

That, severe chastisement and worst requital, is the requital of God’s enemies (jazā’u a‘dā’i, the second hamza may be pronounced fully or replaced with a wāw) — the Fire! (al-nāru, an explicative supplement to jazā’u, ‘the requital’, alluded to by [the demonstrative] dhālika, ‘that’). Therein will be their everlasting abode, that is, as a place of [permanent] residence, from which there will be no removal, as a requital (jazā’an is in the accusative as a verbal noun from the implicit verbal action) for their denial of Our signs, [for their denial of] the Qur’ān.

And those who disbelieve will say, [while] in the Fire: ‘Our Lord, show us those who led us astray from among the jinn and mankind — namely, Iblīs and Cain [respectively], both of whom established disbelief and slaying as something to be emulated — so that we may have them underneath our feet [to trample them], in the Fire, that they may be among the lowermost’, in other words, in a chastisement more severe than ours.

Truly those who say, ‘Our Lord is God!’ and then remain upright, [adhering] to the affirmation of [God’s] Oneness and to whatever else has been enjoined on them, the angels descend upon them, at the point of death, [saying to them], ‘Do not fear, death and what will come after it, nor grieve, for any family or children that you have left behind, for we will look after them after you, and rejoice in the good tidings of the paradise which you were promised.

We are your friends in the life of this world, that is, we will look after you in it, and in the Hereafter, in other words, we will be alongside you thereat until you enter Paradise; and therein you will have whatever your souls desire, and therein you will have whatever you request,

as a hospitality, a pre-prepared provision (nuzulan is in the accusative because of an implied [preceding verb] ‘appointed [for you]’) from One Forgiving, Merciful’, namely, God.

And who speaks better [words] — in other words, no one speaks better [words] — than him who summons [others] to God, by affirming His Oneness, and acts righteously and says, ‘Indeed I am one of those who submit [to God]’?

And they are not equal, the good deed and the evil deed, [even] with respect to their subdivisions, because any number of such [good deeds] are [always] above any number of the latter. Repel, the evil deed, with that, in other words, with that trait, which is better, such as [repelling] anger with endurance, ignorance with forbearance, and [the intention to inflict] harm with pardon, then, behold, he between whom and you there was enmity will be as though he were a dear friend, in other words, then your enemy will become like a close friend in terms of [his] affection [for you], if you act in such a way (alladhī, ‘he … whom’, is the subject; ka-annahu, ‘as though’, is the predicate; idhā is an adverbial particle for [expressing] the comparative import).

But none is granted it, in other words, [none] is given that better trait, except those who are steadfast; and none is granted it except one [deserving] of a great reward.

And if (wa-immā: here the nūn of the conditional particle in has been assimilated with the mā, which is extra) some temptation from Satan should provoke you, in other words, if some diversion should turn you away from that [better] trait and other good acts, then seek refuge in God (this is the response to the conditional [‘and if’]; the response to the command clause is omitted, being ‘and He will ward it off from you’). Truly He is the Hearer, of what is said, the Knower, of what is done.

And among His signs are the night and the day, and the sun and the moon. Do not prostrate to the sun and moon, but prostrate to God Who created them, namely, these fours signs, if it is Him Whom you worship.

But if they disdain, to prostrate to God alone, still those who are with your Lord, that is to say, still the angels, glorify, perform prayers to, Him night and day, and they tire not, they never weary [thereof].

And among His signs is that you see the earth desolate, dried out, without any vegetation, but when We send down water upon it, it stirs, it moves, and swells, [swells] and rises. Truly He Who revives it is indeed the Reviver of the dead. Surely He has power over all things.

Indeed those who blaspheme (yulhidūna derives from [the verb] alhada, or lahada, ‘he blasphemed’) Our signs — the Qur’ān, by denying [its truth] — are not hidden from Us, and We will requite them. Is one who is cast into the Fire better [off], or one who arrives secure on the Day of Resurrection? Act as you wish; indeed He is Seer of what you do — this is [meant as] a threat for them.

Truly those who disbelieve in the Remembrance — the Qur’ān — when it comes to them …, We will requite them — and truly it is an unassailable Book:

falsehood cannot approach it from before it or from behind it, in other words, there is no scripture before it or after it that contradicts it; [it is] a revelation from One Wise, Praised, that is to say, [from] God, the One Who is praised in His affair.

Nothing is said to you, in terms of denial [of you], except, the like of, what has already been said to the messengers before you. Surely your Lord is One of forgiveness, to believers, and [also] One of painful punishment, for disbelievers.

And had We made it, namely, the Remembrance, a non-Arabic Qur’ān, they would have said, ‘Why have its signs not been explained [clearly]?, so that we might understand them? What!, a Qur’ān [that is], non-Arabic and an Arab, prophet?’ (this is an interrogative of denial [spoken] by them; read [a-a‘jamiyyun] pronouncing [both the first and] the second hamza, or by changing it into an alif and either writing it out in full or not). Say: ‘For those who believe it is guidance, from error, and a healing, from [the disease of] ignorance; but as for those who do not believe, there is a deafness in their ears, a heaviness, and so they are unable to hear it, and they are blind to it, so they are unable to comprehend it. Those, they are [as if they were being] called from a distant place’, that is to say, they are like one who is called from far away, unable to hear or comprehend what is being called out to him.

And verily We gave Moses the Scripture, the Torah, but differences arose concerning it, in terms of [some] affirming the truth [of it] and [others] denying [it], as with the Qur’ān; and were it not for a Word that had [already] preceded from your Lord, to defer the reckoning and requital of creatures until the Day of Resurrection, judgement would have been made between them, in this world, concerning that over which they differed; for indeed they, the deniers of it, are in grave doubt concerning it, [doubt] which leads to [utter] uncertainty.

Whoever acts righteously, it is for [the good of] his own soul, that he acts [thus], and whoever does evil, it is to the detriment thereof, in other words, the harm consequent from his evildoing will [only] be to him. And your Lord is not [at all] a tyrant to His servants, that is, He is not One of injustice, as He, exalted be He, says: Surely God shall not wrong so much as the weight of an atom [Q. 4:40].

To Him devolves [all] knowledge of the Hour — when it shall come to pass, none other than Him knows this. And no fruit (thamaratin: a variant reading has [the plural] thamarātin, ‘fruits’) emerges from its sheath, its receptacle (akmām, the plural of kimm), except with His knowledge, and no female bears [child] or delivers except with His knowledge. And on the day when He will call out to them, ‘Where [then] are My associates?’ they will say, ‘We proclaim to You, we now apprise You, that there is no witness amongst us’, that is, a witness [who can testify to the allegation] that You have an associate.

And what they used to call on, [what they used] to worship, before, in this world, of idols, has forsaken them and they suppose, they will be certain, that there is no refuge for them, no escape from the chastisement (the negation in both instances comments on the operation [implied in the nouns of actions; also the negation stands in place of the direct objects in both instances).

Man never wearies of supplicating for good, in other words, he never ceases to ask his Lord for wealth and good health and other [good] things, but should any ill befall him, such as impoverishment or hardship, then he becomes despondent, despairing, of God’s mercy — this and what follows relates to [the attitude of] disbelievers.

And if (wa-la-in: the lām is for oaths) We let him taste, [if] We bestow on him, mercy, [such as] riches or good health, from Us after the harm, the hardship or tribulation, that had befallen him, he will surely say, ‘This is my due!, in other words, [it is] on account of what I do. I do not think that the Hour will ever set in, and even if (wa-la-in: the lām is for oaths) I am returned to my Lord, I will indeed have the best [reward] with Him’, namely, Paradise. But We will assuredly inform those who disbelieve of what they did, and assuredly We will make them taste a harsh chastisement (the lām [prefixed] in both verbs is that for oaths).

And when We bestow graces upon man (insān, the generic noun [is meant]), he shows disregard, of giving thanks, and turns aside, turns his head in arrogance (a variant reading [for nā’a] has na’ā); but when ill befalls him, he makes prolonged supplications.

Say: ‘Consider [this]: if it, the Qur’ān, is from God, as the Prophet says, and you disbelieve in it, who — in other words, none — will be further astray than one who is in extreme defiance?’, of the truth (this [third person singular address] is used instead of ‘[who will be further astray] than you’ in order to point out their status [as disbelievers]).

We shall show them Our signs in the horizons, [in all] the regions of the heavens and the earth, in the way of the luminous [celestial] bodies, [the varieties of] vegetation and trees, and in their own souls, in the way of the exquisite craftsmanship and unique wisdom [inherent in their creation], until it becomes clear to them that it, namely, the Qur’ān, is the truth, revealed by God, informing of the Resurrection, the Reckoning and the Punishment, so that they [realise that they] will be punished for their disbelief in it and in the one who has come with it. Is it not sufficient that your Lord (bi-rabbika, governs the verb yakfi, ‘sufficient’) is witness to all things? (annahu ‘alā kulli shay’in shahīd, substitutes for bi-rabbika). In other words, is not sufficient proof of your truthfulness that nothing whatsoever can be hidden from God?

Nay, verily they are in doubt about the encounter with their Lord, because they deny the Resurrection. Nay, verily He, exalted be He, encompasses all things, in knowledge and in power, and so He will requite them for their disbelief.

Hā mīm

‘ayn sīn qāf: God knows best what He means by these [letters].

Thus — in other words, in the same [manner of] revelation — does He reveal to you and, did He reveal, to those [who were] before you, God (Allāhu, is the agent of [the action of] revelation) the Mighty, in His kingdom, the Wise, in His actions.

To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth, as possession, creation and servants, and He is the Exalted, above His creatures, the Tremendous, the Great.

The heavens are well-nigh (read yakādu, or takādu) rent asunder (yanfatirna: a variant reading has yatafattarna) from above one another, in other words, [well-nigh] is each one torn away from above the one below it because of the magnitude of God, exalted be He, and the angels glorify with praise of their Lord, in other words, they are continuously engaged in praise [of Him], and ask forgiveness for those, believers, on earth. Verily God is the Forgiving, to His friends, the Merciful, to them.

And those who have taken besides Him, namely, idols [as], guardians, God is watchful over them, He keeps count [of their deeds], that He may requite them; and you are not a guardian over them, in order to secure what is demanded of them: your duty is only to deliver the Message.

And thus — in the same [manner of] revelation — have We revealed to you an Arabic Qur’ān, that you may warn, [that you may] threaten, the mother-town and those around it, namely, the inhabitants of Mecca and all other people, and that you may warn, [all] people, of the Day of Gathering, the Day of Resurrection whereat [all] creatures will be gathered, of which there is no doubt. A part, of them, will be in Paradise and a part will be in the Blaze, the Fire.

And had God willed, He would have made them one community, in other words, following one religion, and that is Islam; but He admits whomever He will into His mercy, and the evildoers, the disbelievers, have neither guardian nor helper, to ward off the chastisement from them.

Or have they taken, idols [as], guardians besides Him? (am, ‘or’, is disjunctive, functioning with the sense of bal, ‘nay, but’, the one used to denote a shift [in the subject matter]; the hamza is for denial, in other words ‘those who are taken’ [as guardians] are not [in fact] guardians [of anything]). But God, He [alone] is the Guardian, in other words, then One who helps believers (the fā’ [of fa’Llāhu] is merely for coordination) and He revives the dead, and He has power over all things.

And whatever you may differ, with disbelievers, in, of religion or otherwise, the verdict therein belongs, it will return, to God, on the Day of Resurrection; He will judge between you. Say to them: That then is God, my Lord; in Him I have put my trust, and to Him I turn penitently.

The Originator of the heavens and the earth, the One Who created them [without precedent]. He has made for you, from your own selves, pairs, when He created Eve from Adam’s rib, and [also] pairs, males and females, of the cattle: He multiplies you (read yadhra’ukum) by such [means], by the mentioned ‘making’, that is to say, He multiplies you through this [means] by way of propagation (the [suffixed] pronoun [-kum in yadhra’ukum, ‘He multiplies you’] refers to both human beings and cattle, but predominantly [to humans]). There is nothing like Him (ka-mithlihi: the kāf is extra, as there is no likeness of Him, exalted be He). He is the Hearer, of what is said, the Seer, of what is done.

To Him belong the keys of the heavens and the earth, the keys to their storehouses of rain and vegetation and other things. He extends provision, He makes it abundant, for whomever He will, as a test [of their gratitude], and He restricts [it], He straitens it for whomever He will, as a trial. Truly He has knowledge of all things.

He has prescribed for you as a religion that which He enjoined upon Noah — for he was the first of the prophets [sent] with a [Divine] Law — and that which We have revealed to you, and that which We enjoined upon Abraham, and Moses, and Jesus [declaring], ‘Establish religion and do not be divided in it’: this is what has been prescribed and enjoined upon [those mentioned above], and what has been revealed to Muhammad (s), and it is the affirmation of [God’s] Oneness. Dreadful is for the idolaters that to which you summon them, in the way of affirming the Oneness [of God]. God chooses for it, for the [task of] affirming [His] Oneness, whomever He will, and He guides to it whomever turns penitently, [whomever] applies himself to obedience of Him.

And they did not become divided, that is, the adherents of the [monotheistic] religions [did not become divided] in religion — so that some affirmed the Oneness [of God], while others rejected it — except after the knowledge, of His Oneness, had come to them, out of [jealous] rivalry, on the part of the disbelievers, among themselves. And were it not for a Word that preceded from your Lord, to defer requital [of them], until an appointed term, [until] the Day of Resurrection, it would have [already] been judged between them, to chastise the disbelievers in this world. And indeed those who were made heirs to the Scripture after them, namely, the Jews and the Christians, are truly in grave doubt concerning him, Muhammad (s).

So to that then, [to that] affirmation of [God’s] Oneness, summon, O Muhammad (s), people, and be upright, in [summoning them to] this, just as you have been commanded, and do not follow them in their desires, to abandon it. And say: ‘I believe in whatever Book God has revealed. And I have been commanded to be just between you, in passing judgement. God is our Lord and your Lord. Our deeds concern us and your deeds concern you, and so each [one of us] will be requited according to his [own] deeds. There is no argument, [no] dispute, between us and you — this was [revealed] before the command to struggle [against them]. God will bring us together, at the [time of the] Return to decide [definitively] between us, and to Him is the [final] destination’, the [ultimate] return.

And those who argue, with the Prophet, concerning, the religion of, God after His call has been answered, through faith, on account of His miracle having been manifested — and they are the Jews — their argument stands refuted, [is] invalid, with their Lord, and [His] wrath shall be upon them, and there will be a severe chastisement for them.

God it is Who has revealed the Book, the Qur’ān, with the truth (bi’l-haqqi is semantically connected to anzala, ‘revealed’) as well as the Balance, Justice. And what do you know — perhaps the Hour, that is, its arrival, is near! (la‘alla, ‘perhaps’, comments on the verb describing the action, with what follows it functioning as two direct objects).

Those who do not believe in it seek to hasten it: they say, ‘When will it come?’, as a presumption on their part that it will never come; but those who believe are apprehensive of it and know that it is the truth. Nay, but verily those who are in doubt, those who argue, concerning the Hour are indeed in extreme error!

God is Gracious to His servants, both the pious and the profligate, for He does not destroy them through hunger, despite their acts of disobedience. He provides for whomever He will, from among each of the two [classes of individuals] whatever He will. And He is the Strong, in [effecting] what He wants, the Mighty, Whose way [always] prevails.

And whoever desires, in return for his actions, the harvest of the Hereafter, in other words, its gains, and that is reward, We will enhance for him his harvest, by multiplying in it the good deed up tenfold or more; and whoever desires the harvest of this world, We will give him of it, without multiplying [any of it], [giving him] only what is his [preordained] share; but in the Hereafter he will have no share.

Or have they, the Meccan disbelievers, associates — these being their devils — who have prescribed for them, for the disbelievers, a religion, a corrupt [religion], which God has not given permission for?, such as idolatry and denial of resurrection? And were it not for a [prior] decisive word, in other words, a prior decree to the effect that requital will take place on the Day of Resurrection, it would have been judged between them, and the believers, by chastising the former in this world. Truly the wrongdoers, the disbelievers, will have a painful chastisement.

You will see the wrongdoers, on the Day of Resurrection, apprehensive because of what they had earned, in this world, in the way of evil deeds, lest they be requited for these; and it, that is, the requital for these [deeds], will surely befall them, on the Day of Resurrection, inevitably; but those who believe and perform righteous deeds will be in the lushest Gardens, in other words, in the best of these [Gardens] in comparison with the other ones. They will have whatever they wish near their Lord; that is the great favour.

That is the good tidings (read yubshiru or yubashshiru, from bishāra, ‘good news’) which God gives to His servants who believe and perform righteous deeds. Say: ‘I do not ask of you any reward for it, for delivering the Message, except the affection for [my] kinsfolk (illā, ‘except’: this represents a discontinuous exception, in other words, ‘but I do ask of you that you show affection for my kinship [with you], which at the same time is your kinship’; for he [the Prophet] had kinship ties with all the subdivisions of the [tribe of] Quraysh). And whoever acquires a good deed, an act of obedience, We shall enhance for him its goodness, by multiplying [the reward for] it. Surely God is Forgiving, of sins, Appreciative, [even] of little [good], and so He multiplies it [manifold].

Or (am here is like bal) do they say, ‘He has invented a lie against God?’, in ascribing the Qur’ān to God, exalted be He. For if God will, He can seal, He can fortify, your heart, with patience to endure the hurt they cause [you] by such sayings and otherwise — and God did this. And God will efface the falsehood, which they speak, and vindicate, confirm, the truth with His words, [the ones] revealed to His Prophet. Truly He is Knower of what is in the breasts, of what is in the hearts [of people].

And He it is Who accepts repentance from His servants, and pardons evil deeds, those from which repentance has been made, and knows what they do (yaf‘alūna, may also be read taf‘alūna, ‘you do’).

And He answers those who believe and perform righteous deeds, He grants them what they ask for, and He enhances them of His bounty. And as for the disbelievers, for them there will be a severe chastisement.

For were God to extend His provision to His servants, [to] all of them, they would, all of them, surely become covetous, in other words, they would become tyrants, in the earth; but He sends down (read yunzilu or yunazzilu) of provisions, in the measure that He will, thus extending it for some of His servants to the exclusion of others — and from [such] extending [of provision to some] emerges tyranny. Surely He is Aware, Seer of His servants.

And He it is Who sends down the [saving] rain after they have despaired, [after] they have given up hope of its being sent down, and unfolds His mercy, He extends His rain, and He is the [true] Patron, the Benevolent towards believers, the Praised, by them.

And of His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth and, the creation of, whatever He has scattered, [whatever] He has divided and spread, in them in the way of creatures (dābba: this denotes all those [creatures] which tread [yadubbu] upon the earth, whether human beings or otherwise). And He is able to bring them together, for the Gathering, whenever He will (rational beings as opposed to others predominate in the [suffixed] pronoun [-him of jam‘ihim, ‘to bring them together’]).

And whatever affliction, [whatever] misfortune or hardship, may befall you — [this is] an address to the believers — is on account of what your [own] hands have earned, that is to say, [for] the sins that you have committed — the use of ‘hands’ to express this is because most actions are effected by them. And He pardons much, of these [sins] and does not requite them, for God’s kindness is greater than that He should [for example] double the requital in the Hereafter; as for those who do not commit [grave] sins, then what befalls them in this world [of hardship] raises their degree in the [reward of the] Hereafter.

And you, O idolaters, cannot escape, from God, by fleeing, on earth, and thus elude Him, and, besides God, that is to say, other than Him, you have neither protector nor helper, to ward off His chastisement from you.

And of His signs are the ships [that run] on the sea [appearing] like landmarks, like mountains, in terms of their magnitude.

If He will, He stills the wind, whereat they remain, they become, motionless, fixed, not moving, on its surface. Surely in that there are signs for every steadfast, grateful [servant] — this is the believer, who is steadfast during hardship and grateful in [times of] comfort.

Or He wrecks them (yūbiqhunna, a supplement to yuskin, ‘He stills’), that is to say, [or] He sinks them, including their passengers, by sending violent winds [upon them], because of what they, that is, the passengers of these [ships], have earned, of sins. And He pardons much, of such [sin] and does not cause those who have sinned to drown.

And that those who dispute concerning Our signs may know (read [indicative] wa-ya‘lamu, ‘and [they] know’, beginning a new sentence; or [subjunctive] wa-ya‘lama, ‘and that [they] may know’, as a supplement to an implicit reason, in other words: ‘He drowns them in order to exact vengeance against them and so that they may know that …’) they have no refuge, no escape from the chastisement (the negation represents two direct objects of [the verb] ya‘lamu [or ya‘lama], ‘[they] know’; the negation is also a comment on the [implied] action [of ‘escaping’]).

So whatever you — [this is] an address is to believers and others — have been given, of the luxuries of this world, is [but] the enjoyment of the life of this world, enjoyed for the duration of it but then perishes. But what is with God, of reward, is better and more lasting for those who believe and put their trust in their Lord (li’lladhīna āmanū wa-‘alā rabbihim yatawakkalūna, is supplemented by [the following clause]),

and those who avoid grave sins and indecencies, those [acts] that require [the implementing of] the prescribed legal punishments (hudūd) ([the supplement above is] an example of supplementing the part to the whole) and [who], when they are angry, forgive, they let it pass;

and those who answer their Lord, [those who] respond to what He has summoned them in the way of affirming His Oneness and worship [of Him], and observe prayer, maintaining it regularly, and whose courses of action, those [courses of action] that seem good to them, are [a matter of] counsel between them, in which they consult one another and do not act hastily, and who, of what We have bestowed on them, expend, in obedience to God — such mentioned [individuals] constitute one category;

and those who, when they suffer aggression, injustice, defend themselves — these are another category — that is to say, they retaliate against those who wrong them in the same manner in which the latter wronged them, as God, exalted be He, says:

For the requital of an evil deed is an evil deed like it: the latter is [also] referred to as ‘an evil deed’ because in [outward] form it resembles the former; this is evident in what concerns retaliation for wounds. Some [scholars] say that even if another were to say, ‘May God disgrace you!’, then one should respond [equally] with, ‘May God disgrace you!’. But whoever pardons, his wrongdoer, and reconciles, the amity between himself and the one pardoned, his reward will be with God, that is to say, God will give him his reward without doubt. Truly He does not like wrongdoers, that is, those who initiate acts of wrongdoing and so merit His punishment.

And whoever defends himself after he has been wronged, that is to say, after the wrongdoer has wronged him — for such, there will be no course [of action] against them, no blame [on them].

A course [of action] is only [open] against those who wrong people and seek [to commit], [who] commit, in the earth what is not right, [what are] acts of disobedience. For such there will be a painful chastisement.

But verily he who is patient, and defend himself [by retaliating], and forgives, excuses [the wrong done to him] — surely that, patience and excusing, is [true] constancy in [such] affairs, that is to say, it is one of those [courses of action] for which one must have firm resolve, meaning those which are required [of the believer] by [God’s] Law.

And whomever God leads astray has no protector after Him, that is to say, none to take charge of guiding him after God has led him astray. And you will see the wrongdoers, when they sight the chastisement, saying, ‘Is there any way, any route [by which], to return?’, to this world.

And you will see them being exposed to it, namely, the Fire, submissive, fearful and humbled, by abasement, looking, at it, with a furtive glance, a slight look, stealthily (min [of min tarfin khafiyyin, ‘with a furtive glance’] is to indicate inceptiveness, or it functions with the sense of a bā’, ‘with’ [sc. bi-tarfin khafiyyin]). And those who believe will say, ‘Verily the [true] losers are those who have lost themselves and their families on the Day of Resurrection, for being condemned to abide forever in the Fire and for not being able to attain [the blissful company of] the houris prepared for them in Paradise had they been believers (the relative clause [alladhīna khasirū ..., ‘those who have lost …’] constitutes the predicate of the particle inna, ‘verily’). Truly the wrongdoers, the disbelievers, will be in lasting, everlasting, chastisement — these [words] constitute God’s speech, exalted be He.

And they have no guardians to help them besides God, that is to say, other than Him, to ward off His chastisement from them, and whomever God leads astray has no course [of action]’, no route to the truth in this world or to Paradise in the Hereafter.

Answer your Lord, respond to Him by affirming His Oneness and worshipping [Him], before there comes a day, namely, the Day of Resurrection, for which there is no revoking from God, in other words, one which when He brings about He will not revoke. On that day you will have no refuge, in which to seek refuge in, and for you there will be no [way of] denying, your sins.

But if they are disregardful, of answering [God], We have not sent you as a keeper over them, to keep [track of] their deeds by securing what is demanded of them. Your duty is only to deliver the Message — this was [revealed] before the command to struggle [against them]. And indeed when We let man taste from Us some mercy, some grace, such as wealth and good health, he exults in it; but if some ill, [some] calamity, befalls them (the pronoun here refers to ‘man’, on the basis of the [plural import of the] generic noun) because of what their [own] hands have sent ahead, [because of what] they have offered [of deeds] — the expression refers to ‘the hands’ because most actions are effected by them), then lo! man is ungrateful, for the grace.

To God belongs the kingdom of the heavens and the earth. He creates whatever He will; He gives to whomever He will, in the way of children, females, and He gives to whomever He will males.

Or He combines them, that is to say, [or] He makes them, males and females; and He makes whomever He will infertile, such that she is unable to conceive or he cannot have a child. Surely He is Knower, of what He creates, Powerful, in [bringing about] whatever He will.

And it is not [possible] for any human that God should speak to him except, that He should reveal to him, by revelation, in sleep or by inspiration, or, except, from behind a veil, where He makes the person able to hear His speech but without seeing Him — as was the case with Moses, peace be upon him; or, except, that He should send a messenger, an angel, such as Gabriel, and he, the messenger, then reveals, to the person to whom he has been sent, that is to say, [and then] he speaks to him, with His permission, that is, God’s, whatever He, God, will. Truly He is Exalted, above the attributes of created beings, Wise, in His actions.

And thus, in the same way that We have revealed to messengers other than you, have We revealed to you, O Muhammad (s), a Spirit, namely, the Qur’ān, by which hearts are revived, from Our command, that [command] which We reveal to you. You did not know, before revelation came to you, what the Book was, [what] the Qur’ān [was], nor faith, that is, its ordinances and [ritual] ceremonies (the negation comments in place of the verb on the action, and what has come after it constitutes two direct objects); but We have made it, namely, the Spirit — or the Qur’ān — a light by which We guide whomever We will of Our servants. And verily you guide, you are summoning [people], by means of what is revealed to you, to a straight path, [a straight] way: the religion of Islam,

the path of God, to Whom belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth, as possessions, creatures and servants. Surely with God all matters end [their journey], [all matters] return.

Hā mīm: God knows best what He means by these [letters].

By the Book, the Qur’ān, that clarifies, the one that manifests the path of guidance and what one needs of [the prescriptions of] the Law.

Lo! We have made it, We have brought the Book into existence [as], an Arabic Qur’ān, in the language of the Arabs, that perhaps you, O people of Mecca, may understand, [that you may] comprehend its meanings.

And it is indeed, fixed, in the Mother Book, the source of all the scriptures, namely, the Preserved Tablet, [which is] with Us (ladaynā substitutes [for fī ummi’l-kitābi, ‘in the Mother Book’]) [and it is] indeed exalted, above [all] the scriptures [that came] before it, wise, containing excellent wisdoms.

Shall We turn away, [shall We] withhold, from you the Remembrance, the Qur’ān, utterly, an utter withholding, so that you are then neither commanded nor forbidden, because you are a profligate, an idolatrous, folk? No!

And how many a prophet did We send among the ancients!

And never did a prophet come to them but that they used to deride him, in the same way that your people deride you — this [statement] is intended to comfort the Prophet (s).

So We destroyed those who were mightier than them — than your people — in prowess, strength, and [already] there passed, there has been mentioned in previous verses, the example of the ancients, the description of how they were destroyed, and thus the sequel for your people will be the same.

And if (wa-la-in: the lām is for oaths) you ask them, ‘Who created the heavens and the earth?’ they will surely say (the indicative nūn has been omitted because of the other nūn coming after it, and likewise the wāw [replaced by the damma in -lunna], because of two unvowelled consonants coming together), ‘The Mighty, the Knower created them’ — [this would have to be] their eventual response, that is to say, God [created them], Lord of Might and Knowledge. God, exalted be He, adds:

He Who made the earth a cradle for you, a flat resting-place, like a child’s cradle, and placed for you therein ways, routes, that perhaps you may be guided, to your destinations during your travels;

and Who sent down water from the heaven in measure, that is to say, in the measure that you require thereof and did not send it down in a deluge, and We revived with it a dead land. Thus — like this revivification — will you be brought forth, from your graves, alive;

and Who created the pairs, the species, all of them, and made for you ships and cattle, such as camels, on which you ride (the referential pronoun has been omitted here for brevity; it is genitive in the case of the first, that is, fīhi [sc. tarkabūna fīhi, ‘you ride in them’] and accusative in the case of the second [sc. tarkabūnahā, ‘you ride them’]),

that you may sit, that you may find a firm position, upon their backs (He has made the [suffixed] pronoun a masculine plural and rendered zahr, ‘back’, plural because of the particle mā and its [plural] import); and then remember your Lord’s grace when you are settled on them, and say, ‘Glory be to Him Who has disposed this for us, and we [by] ourselves were no match for it, [not] capable [of it].

And indeed it is to our Lord that we shall return’, [to Him that] we shall depart.

And they assign to Him from among His own servants a part, when they say that the angels are God’s daughters — for a child is a part of its parent — even though the angels are [like them] servants of His, exalted be He. Man, [such as the one] who says the above-mentioned [words], is verily a manifest ingrate, one whose ungratefulness is manifest and clear.

Or (am has the significance of the hamza of denial; the ‘saying’ is implied, in other words, a-taqūlūna, ‘[or] do you say that …’) He has adopted, from all that He has created, daughters, for Himself, and preferred you, privileged you, with sons? — that which is the necessary inference from what you claim and which by itself is an abomination.

And when one of them is given the good tidings of that which he has attributed to the Compassionate One, [of that which] he has likened to Him by the ascription to Him of daughters — for a child is likened to its parent; in other words, when one of them is informed that a daughter has been born to him, his face becomes darkened, transformed into one laden with anguish, and he chokes inwardly, filled with anguish: so how can such a person then attribute daughters to Him? Exalted be He high above such [claims].

What! (a-wa contains both the hamza of denial and the conjunctive waw, ‘and’, in other words, ‘do they ascribe to God …’) one that is brought up amid trinkets, ornaments, and is incoherent in a dispute?, [unable] to argue clearly because of an [inherent] inability [in this respect] as a result of [that person belonging to] the female sex.

And they have made the angels, who are themselves servants of the Compassionate One, females. Did they witness, were they present at, their creation? Their testimony, to the effect that they are females, will be written down and they will be questioned, about it in the Hereafter, wherefore punishment will ensue for them.

And they say, ‘Had the Compassionate One [so] willed, we would not have worshipped them’, the angels: therefore our worship of them happens by His will and so He must be satisfied with it. God, exalted be He, says: They do not have any knowledge of that, which is said of His being satisfied with the worship of these [angels]; and they are only surmising, inventing lies in this [respect] and so punishment will befall them as a result thereof.

Or have We brought them a scripture before, that is, [before] the Qur’ān, that they should worship other than God, so that they are holding fast to it? In other words, this never happened.

Nay, but they say, ‘Lo! we found our fathers following a [certain] creed and we are indeed, proceeding, in their footsteps to be guided’, by them, for they used to worship other than God.

And thus We never sent a warner before you into any city without that its affluent folk, those of comfortable means, said, the like of what your people say: ‘Lo! we found our fathers following a [certain] creed and [so] we are indeed following in their footsteps’.

Say, to them: ‘What! Will you follow them, even if I bring you a better [means to] guidance than what you found your fathers following?’ They say, ‘Lo! we disbelieve in what you, and those before you, are sent with’. God, exalted be He, says to them, as a threat to them:

So We took vengeance on them, that is to say, on those who denied the messengers before you; behold then how was the sequel for the deniers.

And, mention, when Abraham said to his father and his people, ‘Surely I am innocent of that which you worship,

except Him Who originated, created, me; for He will indeed guide me’, He will show me the way to His religion.

And he made it, namely, the statement of the affirmation of [God’s] Oneness, understood from his words, I shall indeed depart to my Lord; He will guide me [Q. 37:99], a word enduring among his posterity, his descendants, and thus there still remains among them those who affirm the Oneness of [God]; that perhaps they, that is, the people of Mecca, might recant, what they follow [and return] to the religion of their forefather Abraham.

Nay, but I have let these, idolaters, and their fathers enjoy [life], without hastening to punish them, until there came to them the truth, the Qur’ān, and a messenger who makes [things] clear, one who manifests to them the stipulations of the Law — and this [messenger] is Muhammad (s).

But when the truth, the Qur’ān, came to them, they said, ‘This is sorcery, and we are indeed disbelievers in it’.

And they said, ‘If only this Qur’ān had been revealed to some great man from, the inhabitants of, the two towns!’, in other words, from either of the two; such as al-Walīd b. al-Mughīra at Mecca or ‘Urwa b. Mas‘ūd al-Thaqafī at Tā’if.

Is it they who apportion the mercy of your Lord?, [the mercy being] prophethood. We have apportioned among them their livelihood in the life of this world, making some of them wealthy and others poor, and raised some of them, in wealth, above others by degrees, so that some of them, who are wealthy, may take others, who are poor, in service, disposed to work for them in return for a wage (the [final] yā’ [in sukhriyyā] is attributive; a variant reading has sikhriyyan); and the mercy of your Lord, that is, Paradise, is better than what they amass, in this world.

And were it not [for the danger] that mankind would be one community, following disbelief, We would have made, for those who disbelieve in the Compassionate One, roofs (read saqfan, or plural suqufan) of silver for their houses (li-buyūtihim substitutes for li-man, ‘for those who’) and stairs, such as steps, [also] of silver, by which they ascend, [by which] they go up to the roof;

and doors, of silver, for their houses, and, We would have made for them, couches, of silver (surur, ‘couches’, is the plural of sarīr) on which they recline,

and ornaments, gold: in other words, were it not for fear that a believer might disbelieve as a result of Our giving the disbeliever what has been mentioned, We would have given him such [luxuries], since the [affairs of this] world represent no danger to Us and he [the disbeliever] would then have no share in the Bliss of the Hereafter. Yet surely (wa-in: in is softened from the hardened form [inna]) all that would be nothing (read lamā, with the mā as extra; or read lammā to mean ‘but’, making the particle in for negation) but the [transient] enjoyment of the life of this world, enjoyed during it, but then perishes, and the Hereafter, Paradise, with your Lord is for the God-fearing.

And whoever withdraws from, [whoever] is oblivious, to the Remembrance of the Compassionate One, namely, the Qur’ān, We assign, We produce, for him a devil and he becomes his companion, never leaving his side.

And indeed they, that is, the devils, bar them, the blind, from the way, [from] the path of guidance, while they suppose that they are [rightly] guided (the plural [muhtadūna] takes into account the [potentially plural] sense of man, ‘whoever’, [of the previous verse]),

until when he comes to Us, such a blind one, together with his companion, on the Day of Resurrection, he says, to him: ‘O (yā is for calling attention) would that there were between me and you the distance of the two easts!’, that is to say, like the distance between the east and the west, What an evil companion then!, you are for me. God, exalted be He, says:

And it, your wishes or your remorse, will not benefit you, blind ones, this day, given that you did wrong, that is to say, [given that] it has become clear to you that you were wrongdoers, through your idolatry in this world, that you, together with your companions, will be sharing in the chastisement (this constitutes the justification, on the basis of an implied lām [sc. li-annakum …], for the ‘lack of benefit’; idh substitutes for al-yawma, ‘this day’).

Can you, then, make the deaf hear, or can you guide the blind and one who is in manifest error?, in other words, such [individuals] will not believe.

So if (fa-immā: the conditional particle in has been assimilated herein with an extra mā) We take you away, by making you die before chastising them, then We will take vengeance on them, in the Hereafter;

or We show you, during your lifetime, that which We have promised them, in the way of chastisement, for surely We have power over, [surely] We are able to chastise, them.

So hold fast to that which has been revealed to you, namely, the Qur’ān; surely you are on a straight path, [a straight] way.

And it is indeed a Reminder, an honour, for you and for your people, as it has been revealed in their language. And you will [eventually] be questioned, about [the extent of] your fulfilling your duty towards it.

And ask those of Our messengers whom We sent before you: Did We [ever] appoint, besides the Compassionate One, that is to say, [any] other than Him, gods to be worshipped? It is said that this is to be understood literally, in other words, that God gathered for him all the messengers on the Night [of the] Journey; but it is also said that this meant [that he should ask] any communities belonging to either of the two Peoples of the Scripture. According to one of the two opinions, he never asked [anyone] since the point of this command to ask is to affirm to the idolaters of Quraysh that no messenger or scripture ever came from God with the command to worship [any] other than God.

And verily We sent Moses with Our signs to Pharaoh and his council, namely, the Egyptians (al-Qibt), and he said, ‘I am indeed the messenger of the Lord of the Worlds’.

But when he brought them Our signs, those proving his mission [from God], behold! they laughed at them.

And We never showed them a sign, from among the signs of chastisement, such as the flood, which was when the waters [of the Nile] penetrated their dwellings and for seven days rose as high as their throats as they sat, or [the chastisement of] the locusts, but it was greater than the one before it, the one immediately preceding it. And We seized them with chastisement, that perhaps they might recant, their disbelief.

And they said, to Moses, upon seeing the chastisement, ‘O sorcerer! — that is to say, ‘[O] knowledgeable, perfect one’, since for them sorcery was an awesome [form of] knowledge — supplicate your Lord for us by the covenant that He has made with you, [to the effect] that He would relieve us from chastisement if we believe. Assuredly we will be guided’, that is to say, [we will become] believers.

But as soon as We relieved them, by the supplication of Moses, from the chastisement, behold! they had broken their pledge, reneging on their covenant and persisting in their disbelief.

And Pharaoh proclaimed, boastfully, among his people, ‘O my people, does not the kingdom of Egypt belong to me, and these rivers, of the Nile, flowing beneath me?, that is to say, beneath my palaces. Do you not perceive?, my magnificence.

Or, do you perceive, in which case, am I not better than this one, namely, Moses, who is contemptible, feeble and lowly, and who can scarcely speak clearly?, [who can scarcely] articulate his speech, because of his lisp — which was the result of his [accidentally] placing a hot coal in his mouth when he was a child.

Why then, if he were being truthful, have bracelets of gold (asāwira, is the plural of aswira, which is the plural of siwār, similar [in pattern] to [ghurāb] aghriba) not been cast on him — as according to their custom with those whom they made their leaders, dressing them with gold bracelets and gold necklaces — or the angels not come with him one after the other?’, in succession, to testify to his truthfulness.

Thus did he, Pharaoh, persuade, incite, his people and they obeyed him, in his wish that Moses be denied. They were truly an immoral folk.

So when they had angered Us, We took vengeance on them and drowned them all.

And We made them a thing past (salaf, is the plural of sālif, similar [in pattern] to khādim, khadam) that is to say, a precedent, as a lesson, and an example for others, after them, that they [posterity] might take their predicament as a lesson and so not engage in actions similar to theirs.

And when the son of Mary is cited as an example — after God’s [following] words were revealed: ‘Truly you and what you worship besides God shall be fuel for Hell’ [Q. 21:98] and the idolaters said, ‘We are satisfied that our gods be together with Jesus [in Hell], for he too was worshipped besides God’ — behold! your people, that is, the idolaters, laugh at it, at this example — they clamour with joy at what they hear.

And they say, ‘Are our gods better or he?’, Jesus. We are satisfied that our gods be [in the same predicament] with him. They only cite this, that is, the example, to you for the sake of contention, [merely] arguing with falsehood, for they know that [the particle] mā [of wa-mā ta‘budūna, ‘and what you worship’] refers [only] to non-rational beings and cannot therefore include Jesus, peace be upon him. Nay, but they are a contentious lot, an extremely disputatious folk.

He, Jesus, is only a servant [of Ours] on whom We bestowed favour, through prophethood, and We made him, by his [coming into] being without a father, an exemplar for the Children of Israel, that is to say, like an example because of the wondrousness of his case, one from which one is able to infer God’s power, exalted be He, to do whatever He will.

And had We willed, We would have appointed among you, instead of you, angels to be [your] successors in the earth, by Our destroying you.

And indeed he, that is, Jesus, is a portent of the Hour — [the arrival of] it is known by the sending down of him — so do not doubt it (tamtarunna: the indicative nūn has been omitted for apocopation together with the wāw of the [third] person [plural] on account of two unvowelled consonants coming together) but, say to them: ‘Follow me, in the affirmation of [God’s] Oneness. This, to which I command you, is a straight path’.

And do not let Satan bar you, [do not let him] turn you away from God’s religion. Indeed he is a manifest enemy of yours, one whose enmity is manifest.

And when Jesus came with the clear signs, the miracles and the prescriptions [of the Law], he said, ‘Verily I have brought you wisdom, prophethood and the prescriptions of the Gospel, and [I have come] to make clear to you some of what you are at variance over, in the way of the rulings of the Torah for what concerns religion and otherwise — and he [indeed] made clear to them the matters of religion. So fear God and obey me.

Assuredly God is my Lord and your Lord; so worship Him — that is a straight path’.

But the factions differed among themselves, regarding [the status of] Jesus: was he God, or the son of God, or the third of Three [deities]? So woe (waylun is a term implying chastisement) to those who do wrong, [those] who blaspheme in what they say about Jesus, from the chastisement of a painful day.

Are they, that is, the Meccan disbelievers, awaiting anything, that is to say — they are [in fact] awaiting nothing — but that Hour should come upon them (an ta’tiyahum substitutes for al-sā‘ata, ‘the Hour’) suddenly, unexpectedly, while they are unaware?, of the time of its coming beforehand.

Friends, [who shared] in acts of disobedience in this world, will, on that day, the Day of Resurrection (yawma’idhin is semantically connected to His [following] words) be foes of one another, except for the God-fearing, those who have love for one another through their [commitment to] obedience of God — such will be friends [on that day] and it will be said to them:

‘O My servants, there is no fear for you this day, nor will you grieve,

those who believed (alladhīna āmanū adjectivally qualifies ‘ibādī, ‘My servants’) in Our signs — the Qur’ān — and had submitted themselves [to Me].

Enter Paradise, you (antum, the subject) and your spouses, your wives, to be made joyful, to be made happy and to be honoured (tuhbarūna, ‘to be made joyful’, is the predicate of the [above] subject).

They will be served from all around with [large] dishes of gold and goblets (akwāb is the plural of kūb, which is a [drinking] vessel without a handle so that the person can drink from whichever side he wants) and therein will be whatever souls desire, to relish, and eyes delight in, contemplating, and you will abide in it [forever].

And that is the Paradise which you have been given to inherit [as the reward] for what you used to do.

Therein are abundant fruits for you, from which, that is, parts of which, you will eat’, for whatever is eaten is [immediately] replaced [with more of the same].

Indeed the guilty will abide [forever] in the chastisement of Hell —

it will not be lightened for them and they will be [utterly] despondent in it, silent in despair.

And We never wronged them, but they themselves were the wrongdoers.

And they will call out, ‘O Mālik — the [name of the] Keeper of the Fire — let your Lord finish us off!’, let Him make us die. He will say, after [the passing of] a thousand years, ‘You will surely remain!’, you will remain in the chastisement forever.

God, exalted be He, says: ‘Verily We brought you, O people of Mecca, the truth, by the tongue of the Messenger, but most of you were averse to the truth’.

Or have they, that is, the disbelievers of Mecca, contrived, consolidated, some matter?, in plotting against the Prophet Muhammad (s). For We [too] are indeed contriving, [We too] are consolidating Our plan to destroy them.

Or do they reckon that We do not hear their secret thoughts and their conspiring?, that is to say, what they secretly communicate to others and what they openly conspire about among themselves. Yes indeed!, We hear [all of] that, and Our messengers, the guardians, are with them keeping a record, of that.

Say: ‘If the Compassionate One had a son, hypothetically [speaking], I would have been first among the worshippers, of that son; but it is established that He, exalted be He, does not have a child and thus there can be no worshipping of such [a child].

Glory be to the Lord of the heavens and the earth, the Lord of the Throne (the ‘arsh is the [same as the] kursī) above what they allege!’, [above] the lies which they speak in ascribing a child to Him.

So leave them to indulge, their falsehoods, and play, in this world of theirs, until they encounter that day of theirs which they are promised, chastisement in, and that is the Day of Resurrection.

And He it is Who in the heaven is God (fi’l-samā’i ilāhun: pronounce here both hamzas, or drop the first one or softening it into a yā’), in other words, [Who in the heaven] is the Worshipped One, and in the earth is God (both adverbials are semantically connected to what follows); and He is the Wise, in the management of His creatures, the Knower, of their welfare.

And Blessed, Magnificent, be He to Whom belongs the kingdom of the heavens and the earth and all that is between them; and with Him is the knowledge of the Hour, [of] when it shall come to pass, and to Him they will [all] be returned (yurja‘ūna, may also be read [second person plural] turja‘ūna, ‘you will be returned’).

And those whom they, the disbelievers, call on, [those whom] they worship, besides Him, that is, besides God, have no power of intercession, for anyone, except those who bear witness to the truth, that is, those who say ‘there is no god except God’, with [full] knowledge, in their hearts of what they have testified to with their tongues — such are Jesus, Ezra, and the angels, who will intercede for believers.

And if (wa-la-in: the lām is for oaths) you ask them who created them, they will surely say, ‘God’ (la-yaqūlunna: the indicative nūn and the [plural] person indicator wāw have been omitted). How can they then deviate?, [how] can they be turned away from worshipping God?

And [as] for his saying: that is, the saying of the Prophet Muhammad (s) (wa-qīlihi is [accusative] dependent because it is a verbal noun followed by an implicit verb, in other words wa-qāla [qīlihi], ‘and he said [his saying]’) ‘O my Lord! These are indeed a people who have no faith’.

God, exalted be He, says: Then disregard them, leave [them] be, and say, ‘Peace!’, [I will stay away] from you — this was [revealed] before he was commanded to fight them. For they will [soon] come to know (ya‘lamūna, may also be read as [second person plural] ta‘lamūna, ‘you will [come to] know’), [meant] to threaten them.

Hā mīm: God knows best what He means by these [letters].

By the Book, the Qur’ān, that clarifies, the one that distinguishes what is lawful from what is unlawful.

Indeed We revealed it on a blessed night, the Night of Ordainment (laylat al-qadr), or the eve of the middle of Sha‘bān, in which it was revealed from the Mother Book, from the seventh heaven to the heaven of this world. Indeed We have been warning, We have been causing [people] by it to have fear [of God].

In it, that is to say, on the Night of Ordainment, or on the eve of the middle of Sha‘bān, every definitive matter, that has been fixed, with regard to the provisions and the terms of life and other things [decreed by God] for the entire year until that same night again [the following year], is distinguished, is decided.

As an ordinance, a distinguishing, from Us. Indeed We have been sending from your Lord, messengers, [such as] Muhammad (s) and those before him,

as a mercy, out of compassion for those to whom these [messengers] have been sent. Surely He is the Hearer, of their sayings, the Knower, of their actions.

Lord of the heavens and the earth and all that is between them (read rabbu’l-samāwāti, in the nominative [to understand it] as a third predicate; or read rabbi’l-samāwāti as a substitution for rabbika, ‘your Lord’), if you should be certain, O people of Mecca, that God, exalted be He, is the Lord of the heavens and the earth, then also be certain that Muhammad (s) is His Messenger.

There is no god except Him. He gives life and brings death. Your Lord and the Lord of your forefathers.

Nay, but they linger in doubt, concerning the Resurrection, playing, in mockery of you, O Muhammad (s), and so he said, ‘My God, assist me against them with seven [years of drought] like the seven of Joseph’.

God, exalted be He, says: So watch out for the day when the heaven will produce a visible smoke. Thus the earth became barren and famine became so severe that they began to see what looked like smoke rising between the heaven and the earth,

that will envelop the people, and so they said: ‘This is a painful chastisement!

Our Lord, relieve us from the chastisement; indeed we have believed’, we have [now] affirmed the sincerity of Your Prophet.

God, exalted be He, says: How can there be a reminder for them, that is to say, faith will not benefit them once the chastisement has been sent down, when already there has come to them a manifest Messenger, whose Message is plain [to understand],

but they turned away from him and said, ‘He has been taught — that is, a human being is teaching him the Qur’ān — [he is] a madman!’

‘Indeed We will remove the chastisement, the famine from you [for], a little, time; and so it was removed from them. [But] you will indeed revert!’, to your disbelief — and they did.

Mention, the day when We shall assault with the most mighty assault — this was the day of [the battle of] Badr — [then] indeed We shall take vengeance, on them (al-batsh, means ‘to seize violently’).

And certainly We tried, We tested, before them the people of Pharaoh, together with him, when a messenger came to them, namely, Moses, peace be upon him, who was honoured, before God, exalted be He,

[saying], ‘Give over to me, what I summon you to in the way of faith, that is, manifest your faith to me, O, servants of God; indeed I am for you a messenger [who is] faithful’, in what he has been sent with,

and, ‘Do not rebel, [do not] try to act strong, against God, by neglecting obedience to Him. Lo! I bring you a clear warrant’, [clear] proof of [the sincerity of] my Mission — but they threatened to stone him to death.

So he said, ‘And truly I seek refuge in my Lord and your Lord, lest you should stone me, [to death] with rocks.

And if you do not believe me, then stay away from me’, [that is] then refrain from harming me — but they did not refrain from such [action].

So he called to his Lord, saying, ‘These are indeed a guilty, an idolatrous, lot!’

God, exalted be He, said: ‘Then set out (read fa-asri or fa’sri) with My servants, the Children of Israel, by night; for you will assuredly be pursued, [surely] Pharaoh and his people will pursue you.

And leave the sea behind, once you and your companions have crossed it, at rest, still and calm, until the Egyptians enter it: indeed they will be a drowned host’ — he [Moses] was reassured by this [statement] — and they were [indeed] drowned.

How many gardens, orchards, and, flowing, fountains did they leave behind,

as well as sown fields and many a glorious residence, [many] a splendid court,

and the bounty, the comforts, in which they rejoiced!, [in which] they lived luxuriously.

So [it was] (kadhālika is the predicate of a subject [that is missing], such as ‘the matter was [so]’) and We made these an inheritance, that is to say, their riches, for another people, namely, the Children of Israel.

So neither the heaven nor the earth wept for them — in contrast to the [case with] believers, at the point of whose death weep both their places of prayer on earth and the route by which their deeds ascend the heaven; nor were they reprieved, [nor] were they deferred [until they were able] to make repentance.

And verily We delivered the Children of Israel from the humiliating chastisement, of having their children slain and their womenfolk taken as servants,

from Pharaoh (min Fir‘awna, is said to be a substitution for al-‘adhābi, on the basis of an implied annexation, that is to say, [min] ‘adhābi [Fir‘awna]; or it is said to be a circumstantial qualifier referring to al-‘adhāb, ‘the chastisement’). Truly he was a tyrant of the wanton ones.

And verily We chose them, that is, the Children of Israel, with a knowledge, that We had of their state, over [all] the worlds, that is, the worlds of their time, [those of] the rational beings.

And We gave them signs in which there was a manifest trial, an obvious grace, such as the parting of the sea, [the sending down of] manna and quails and other such [signs].

Indeed these ones, that is, the Meccan disbelievers, say,

‘It, that death after which there is life, is nothing more than our first death, that is, when they were sperm-drops, and we shall not be resurrected, [we shall not be] raised alive after the second one.

Bring us then our fathers, alive, if you are being truthful’, about our being resurrected after we have died, that is to say, that we will be given life [again].

God, exalted be He, says: Are they better, or the people of Tubba‘ — [he was] a prophet or a righteous man — and those, communities, before them? We destroyed, because of their disbelief. In other words: they are not mightier than those, and yet they were destroyed; indeed they were criminals.

And We did not create the heavens and the earth and all that is between them, [intending] to play, by creating all that (lā‘ibīna, ‘to play’, is a circumstantial qualifier).

We did not create them, and all that is between them, except with the truth, that is to say, [We created them] rightfully so that one might infer thereby Our power and Our Oneness and other matters; but most of them, that is, the Meccan disbelievers, do not know.

Assuredly the Day of Decision, the Day of Resurrection, in which God will decide between servants, will be the tryst for all of them, for everlasting chastisement;

the day when a friend will not avail a friend, on account of kinship or friendship, that is to say, [the day when] he will not [be able to] ward off from the other, anything, of the chastisement, nor will they be helped — [nor will they] be protected from it (yawma, ‘the day’, is a substitution for yawma’l-fasl, ‘the Day of Decision’),

except for him on whom God has mercy — and these are the believers, for they will intercede for one another with God’s permission. He is indeed the Mighty, the Victor in His retribution of the disbelievers, the Merciful, to believers.

Lo! the tree of Zaqqūm, one of the vilest of the bitter trees of the Tihāma region: God, exalted be He, will make it grow forth in the Hell-fire,

will be the food of the sinful, Abū Jahl and his companions, the gravest of sinners.

Like molten copper, that is to say, like the dregs of black oil (ka’l-muhli, is the second predicate) it will boil inside the bellies ([if] read taghlī, then it is a third predicate; [if] yaghlī, then it is a circumstantial qualifier referring to al-muhl, ‘molten copper’),

as the boiling of boiling water, [hamīm means] water of the most extreme temperature.

‘Seize him, it will be said to the Zabāniya [the Guards of Hell], ‘seize the sinner’, and drag him (read fa‘tilūhu or fa‘tulūhu), haul him away violently and brutally, to the midst of Hell-fire, [al-jahīm means] the centre of the Fire.

Then pour over his head the torture of boiling water!’, that is to say, the boiling water which is ever-torturous (this [use of ‘the torture of boiling water’] is rhetorically more intense than what is stated by the verse: boiling water will be poured over their heads [Q. 22:19]).

And it will be said to him: ‘Taste!, that is, [taste] the chastisement. Indeed you are the mighty, the noble one!, as you claimed when you used to say, ‘There is nothing between its two mountains [sc. Mecca] that is mightier or nobler than me!’

And it will be said to them: This, that you see of the chastisement, is indeed that which you used to doubt’, about which you used to be uncertain.

Assuredly the God-fearing will be in a secure place, a seat in which there will be security from [all] fear,

amid gardens, orchards, and springs,

dressed in fine silk and [heavy] silk brocade, that is to say, in fine and thick silks (sundusin wa’stabraqin, respectively), sitting face to face (mutaqābilīna is a circumstantial qualifier), that is to say, they do not look upon each other backs, since the couches revolve with them in them.

So [shall it be] (an implied al-amru, ‘the matter’, should be read as preceding this); and We shall pair them, either in conjugality or [meaning] We shall join them, with houris of beautiful eyes, women of the fairest complexion with wide and beautiful eyes.

They will call, they will request from servants, therein, that is, in Paradise, to bring, every fruit, thereof, [remaining] secure, [in their knowledge] that it will not come to an end or cause harm and [secure] from all danger (āminīna, ‘secure’, is a circumstantial qualifier’).

They will not taste death therein, other than the first death, namely, the one [that came] in this world after they had lived in it (some [scholars] think that illā, ‘other than’, here means ba‘da, ‘after’). And He will shield them from the chastisement of Hell-fire —

a bounty from your Lord (fadlan is a verbal noun, with the sense of tafaddulan, and is in the accusative [dependent status] because of an implied [preceding] tafaddala). That is the supreme triumph.

For We have made it easy, We have facilitated the Qur’ān, in your tongue, in your language, so that the Arabs may understand it from you, that perhaps they may remember, [that perhaps] they may be admonished and become believers — but they do not believe.

So be on the look out, await their destruction. Indeed they [too] are on the look out, for your death — this was before the revelation of the command to struggle against them.

Hā mīm: God knows best what He means by these [letters].

The revelation of the Book, the Qur’ān (tanzīlu’l-kitābi, the subject) is from God (mina’Llāhi, the predicate thereof) the Mighty, in His kingdom, the Wise, in His actions.

Truly in the heavens and the earth, that is to say, in their creation, there are signs, indicating the power of God and His Oneness, exalted be He, for believers.

And in your creation, that is to say, and in the creation of every one of you from a sperm-drop, then a blood clot, then an embryo until it becomes a human being; and, [in] the creation of, what He has scattered, [what] He has dispersed throughout the earth, of animals — [dābba denotes] whatever treads on (yadubbu) the earth of [both] human beings and other [animals] — there are signs for a people who are certain, of the Resurrection;

and, in, the alternation of night and day, their passing and their arrival, and what God sends down from the heaven [in the way] of provision, rain, for it constitutes a means of provision, with which He revives the earth after it is dead, and the circulation of the winds, its alternation between southerly and northerly, hot and cold, there are signs for a people who understand, proofs and therefore have faith.

These, mentioned signs, are the signs of God, the proofs of His that indicate His Oneness, which We recite, relate, to you with truth (bi’l-haqqi is semantically connected to natlū, ‘We recite’). So in what [kind of] discourse then, after God, that is to say, [after] His discourse, namely, the Qur’ān, and His signs, His definitive arguments, will they, that is, the disbelievers of Mecca, believe? In other words: they will not believe [in anything] (a variant reading [for yu’minūna, ‘they believe’] has tu’minūna, ‘you believe’).

Woe (waylun is an expression implying chastisement) to every sinful liar,

who hears the signs of God, the Qur’ān, being recited to him, then persists, in his disbelief, arrogantly, disdainful of faith, as if he had not heard them. So give him tidings of a painful chastisement.

And should he come to know anything of Our signs, namely, the Qur’ān, he takes them in mockery. For such, liars — there is a degrading chastisement.

Beyond them, that is to say, ahead of them — because they are [still] in this world — is Hell, and that which they have earned, of wealth and deeds, will not avail them in any way, nor those whom they took besides God, that is, idols, as patrons. And for them there will be a great chastisement.

This, that is, the Qur’ān, is a guidance, from error; and those who disbelieve in the signs of their Lord, for them there will be a torture, a lot, of a painful, an excruciating, chastisement.

God it is Who disposed for you the sea so that the ships may sail upon it by His command, by His permission, and that you may seek, that you may request, by way of trade, of His bounty, and that perhaps you may give thanks.

And He has disposed for you whatever is in the heavens, of sun, moon, stars, water and otherwise, and whatever is in the earth, of animals, trees, vegetation, rivers and otherwise, that is to say, He created [all] that for your benefit, all (jamī‘an is for emphasis) being from Him (minhu is a circumstantial qualifier, that is to say, He has disposed them as something from Him, exalted be He). Surely in that there are signs for a people who reflect, on them and therefore believe.

Tell those who believe to forgive those who do not anticipate, [those who do not] fear, the days of God, the events which He precipitates, that is to say, forgive the disbelievers the harm which they have caused you — this was before the command to struggle against them [had been revealed] — that He, God, may requite (a variant reading [for li-yajziya] has li-najziya, ‘that We may requite’) a people for what they used to earn, when they used to forgive disbelievers the harm which they did.

Whoever acts righteously, it is for [the benefit of] his own soul, that he acts [so], and whoever does evil, it is to the detriment thereof, that he has done evil; then to your Lord you will be returned, [with your Lord] you shall end up, whereupon He will requite the one of righteous deeds and the evildoer.

And verily We gave the Children of Israel the Scripture, the Torah, and [the means of] judgement, therewith between people, and prophethood, for Moses and Aaron among them, and We provided them with the good things, the lawful things, such as manna and quails, and We favoured them above [all] worlds, the worlds of their time, [that is, above all other] rational beings.

And We gave them clear illustrations of the commandment, the commandment of religion, in the way of what is lawful or unlawful, and the Mission of Muhammad (s), upon whom be the most excellent blessings and peace. And they did not differ, regarding his Mission, except after the knowledge had come to them, out of rivalry among themselves, that is to say, because of some rivalry that came about among them, out of envy of him. Surely your Lord will judge between them on the Day of Resurrection concerning that in which they used to differ.

Then We set you, O Muhammad (s), upon a [clear] course, [a clear] way, of the commandment, the commandment of religion; so follow it, and do not follow the desires of those who do not know, in worshipping other than God.

Assuredly they will not avail, they [will not] protect, you in any way against God, against His chastisement. And assuredly the wrongdoers, the disbelievers, are allies of one another; but God is the ally [only] of the God-fearing.

This, Qur’ān, is [a set of] insights for mankind, guideposts with which they can discern [God’s] rulings and legal proscriptions, and guidance and mercy for a people who have certainty, with regard to the [truth of the] Resurrection.

Or (am has the significance of the [rhetorical] hamza of denial) do those who have perpetrated evil acts, [such as] disbelief and disobedience, suppose that We shall treat them as those who believe and perform righteous deeds, equally (sawā’an is the predicate) in their life and in their death? (mahyāhum wa-mamātuhum, [this clause] constitutes the subject and a supplement; the sentence [itself] is a substitution for the kāf [of ka’lladhīna, ‘as those’], and both [suffixed] pronouns [-hum] refer to the disbelievers). The meaning is: do they suppose that in the Hereafter We will assign them [a] good [fate] like believers, [that they will enjoy] a life of plenty, one equal to their life in this world, as when they said to the believers: ‘Surely if we were to be resurrected, we will be given the same good things that you will be given!’ God, exalted be He, says, in accordance with His denial [implicit] in the [rhetorical interrogative] hamza: How evil is that judgement which they make! In other words, it will not be so, for in the Hereafter they will be [suffering] in the chastisement, in contrast to their lives in this world; the believers, on the other hand, will be [delighting] in the Reward in the Hereafter because of their righteous deeds in this world, such as [their observance of] prayers, [their] alms-giving, fasting and otherwise (the mā, ‘that … which’, relates to the verbal action, that is to say, ba’isa hukman hukmuhum hādhā, ‘awful as a judgement is this judgement of theirs’).

And God created the heavens and, He created, the earth with the truth (bi’l-haqqi is semantically connected to khalaqa, ‘He created’), so that He may indicate His power and His Oneness, and so that every soul may be requited for what it has earned, in the way of acts of disobedience or obedience, and therefore the disbeliever cannot be equal to the believer, and they will not be wronged.

Have you then seen, inform Me [about], him who has taken as his god his [own] desire, [that is] whatever [new] stone he may desire after [having desired] some other stone, considering this [new one] to be better, and whom God has led astray knowingly, on His part, exalted be He, that is to say, knowing him to be of those who follow misguidance before he was created, and set a seal upon his hearing and his heart, so that he cannot hear guidance or understand it, and laid a covering, a darkness, over his sight?, so that he cannot perceive guidance (here one should understand as implied the second direct object of [the verb] a-ra’ayta, ‘have you seen’, namely: a-yahtadī, ‘can he find guidance?). So who will guide him after God?, that is to say, after His leading him astray? In other words, he will not find guidance. Will you not then remember?, [will you not then] be admonished? (tadhakkarūna: one of the two tā’ letters [of the original form tatadhakkarūna] has been assimilated with the dhāl).

And they, those who deny the Resurrection, say, ‘There is only, that is to say, [the only] life [is], our life, the one that is, in this world. We die and we live, that is to say, some die, while others are given life by [virtue of] being born, and nothing but time, that is, [nothing but] the passage of time, destroys us’. God, exalted be He, says: Of that, saying, they have no knowledge; they are only making conjectures.

And when Our signs, of the Qur’ān, indicating Our power to resurrect, are recited to them, being clear signs, evident [signs] (bayyinātin, ‘clear signs’, is a circumstantial qualifier), their only argument is to say, ‘Bring us our fathers, alive, if you are being truthful’, [when you say] that we will be resurrected.

Say: ‘God [is the One Who] gives you life, when you are sperm-drops, then makes you die, then gathers you, alive, to the Day of Resurrection, in which there is no doubt; but most people, and these are the one who say the above-mentioned, do not know’.

And to God belongs the kingdom of the heavens and the earth. And on the day when the Hour sets in (yawma taqūmu’l-sā‘atu is substituted by [the following, yawma’idhin]) on that day the followers of falsehood, the disbelievers, will be losers, that is to say, their loss will become manifest by their ending up in the Fire.

And you will see every community, that is, [all] members of a religion, crouching, on their knees — or [jāthiya means] ‘gathered together’. Every community will be summoned to its record, the record of its deeds and it will be said to them: ‘Today you will be requited for what you used to do, that is, [you will be given] the desert thereof.

This is Our book, the register of [deeds recorded by] the guardian angels, which pronounces against you with truth. Indeed We used to write down, record and preserve, what you used to do’.

So as for those who believed and performed righteous deeds, their Lord will admit them into His mercy, His Paradise. That is the manifest triumph, the clear and evident [triumph].

But as for those who disbelieved, it will be said to them: ‘Were not My signs, [was not] the Qur’ān, recited to you, but you were disdainful, you were arrogant, and were a guilty, a disbelieving, lot?

And when it was said, to you, O disbelievers: “God’s promise, of resurrection, is indeed true, and there is no doubt about the Hour”, (read al-sā‘atu or al-sā‘ata) you said, “We do not know what the Hour is. We only make conjectures (al-Mubarrad said that this actually [means] in nahnu illā nazunnu zannan) and we are by no means certain” ’, that it will come to pass.

And there will appear before them, in the Hereafter, the evils of what they did, in this world, that is to say, the requital thereof, and they will be besieged by, there shall befall [them], what they used to deride, namely, the chastisement [of the Hereafter].

And it will be said: ‘Today We will forget you, We will abandon you in the Fire, just as you forgot the encounter of this day of yours, that is to say, [just as] you neglected to perform [those good] deeds [in preparation] for the encounter with it, and your abode will be the Fire, and you will not have any helpers, [any] protectors therefrom.

That is because you took God’s signs, the Qur’ān, in mockery, and the life of this world deceived you’, to the extent that you said, ‘There is neither Resurrection nor Reckoning’. So today they will not be brought out (read either active yakhrujūna, ‘they will [not] come out’, or passive yukhrajūna, ‘they will [not] be brought out’) of it, of the Fire, nor will they asked to make amends: they will not be asked to [try to] attain the pleasure of their Lord by repenting or being obedient, for such [action] will be of no use then.

So to God belongs [all] praise, the attribution to Him of what is beautiful [in words] for fulfilling His promise regarding the deniers; Lord of the heavens and Lord of the earth, the Lord of the Worlds, the Creator of all that has been mentioned (‘ālam, ‘world’, denotes everything other than God; it is in the plural [‘ālamīn] because of the different types [of beings] in them; rabbi, ‘Lord’, [in the last clause] is a substitution [for the previous ones]).

And to Him belongs [all] grandeur, [all] majesty, in the heavens and the earth (fī’l-samāwāti wa’l-ardi is a circumstantial qualifier), and He is the Mighty, the Wise — as [explained in a similar statement] above.