Al-Anbya 21:79–112

And We gave understanding of this, that is, the judgement, to Solomon. [It is said that] both of their decisions were [the result of] independent judgement [exercised by both], and that David consulted Solomon; but it is also said [that their decisions were] by way of inspiration [from God] — the second [decision] abrogated the first. And to each, of the twain, We gave judgement, prophethood, and knowledge, in matters of religion. And We disposed the mountains to glorify [God] with David, and the birds also, were disposed to glorify [God] with him, for he [David] had commanded such [glorification on their part], so that whenever there was a lapse [on his part], he would [be reminded to] apply himself to the task [of glorifying God] promptly. And We were [certainly] doers, of this disposing of them to glorify [God] along with him, even if it should amaze you, that they should [be able to] respond to the lord David.

And We taught him the art of making garments, namely, coats of mail — [which are called labūs] because they are worn (tulbas). He was the first [human being] to make them; hitherto there were [only] plates [of armour] — for you, as well as all mankind, to protect you (read nuhsinakum, [the subject being] ‘God’; or yuhsinakum, [the subject being] ‘David’; or tuhsinakum, [the subject being] ‘garments’) against your [mutual] violence, your wars against your enemies. Will you then, O people of Mecca, be thankful?, for My favours, by believing in the Messenger — in other words, be thankful to Me by [doing] this.

And, We disposed, for Solomon the wind to blow strongly — in another verse it is [described as being] rukhā’an, ‘to blow softly’ [Q. 38:36]; in other words, [it is either] blowing violently or gently [respectively], according to what he [Solomon] wanted — making its way, at his command, to the land which We have blessed, namely, Syria; and We have knowledge of all things, among them the fact that God, exalted be He, knew that what He gave to Solomon would prompt him to be subservient to his Lord, and so God did this in accordance with His knowledge.

And, We disposed, of the devils some that dived for him, plunging into the sea and bringing out of it jewels for Solomon, and performed tasks other than that, that is, other than diving, such as building and otherwise. And We were watchful over them, lest they should spoil what they had made, for whenever they completed a task before nightfall, they would [invariably] spoil it, unless they were occupied with some other [task].

And, mention, Job (Ayyūba, is substituted by [the following, idh nādā rabbahu …]) when he called out to his Lord — after he had been afflicted with the loss of all of his possessions and children, the laceration of his body, his being shunned by all except his wife, for a period of thirteen, seventeen, or eighteen years, as well as [the affliction of enduring] a straitened means of livelihood — ‘Indeed (read annī because of the implicit yā’ [of the first person pronoun]) harm, adversity, has befallen me, and You are the Most Merciful of the merciful’.

So We responded to him, in his call, and removed the harm that had befallen him, and We gave him [back] his family, his male and female children, by bringing them back to life — of each sex there were three or seven along with them [other children] the like of them, from his wife, for she was made younger. He had also possessed a threshing floor for wheat and another for barley, so God sent two clouds and one of them poured forth gold onto the wheat threshing floor and the other poured forth silver onto the barley threshing floor, until they overflowed; as a mercy (rahmatan, a direct object denoting reason) from Us (min ‘indinā, an adjectival phrase) and a reminder to worshippers, that they be patient and thus be rewarded [by God].

And, mention, Ishmael and Idrīs and Dhū’l-Kifl — all were of the patient, in [maintaining] obedience to God and staying away from acts of disobedience to Him.

And We admitted them into Our mercy, through [granting them] prophethood. Indeed they were among the worthy, of it. Dhū’l-Kifl was so called because he undertook (takaffala) to fast every day and stay up every night in prayer, and to pass judgement between people without succumbing to anger, and fulfilled this [undertaking]. It is also said, however, that he was not a prophet.

And, mention, Dhū’l-Nūn, the one of the whale, namely, Jonah son of Amittai (Yūnus bin Mattā) when he went off enraged ([Dhā’l-Nūn] is substituted by [the clause idh dhahaba mughādiban]) by his people, that is, furious with them because of what he had suffered at their hands — even though he had not been granted permission [by God to go off as he did] — thinking that We had no power over him, that is, that We could [not] compel him to [submit to] Our decree in the way that We did by imprisoning him inside the stomach of the whale; or that We could [not] make circumstances difficult for him. Then he cried out in the darknesses, [through] the darkness of the night, the darkness of the sea and the darkness of the whale’s stomach, that: ‘There is no god except You! Glory be to You! I have indeed been one of the wrongdoers’, for leaving my people without [Your] permission.

So We responded to him and delivered him from the distress, by [means of] those words, and thus, in the same way that We delivered him, We deliver the believers, from their anguish when they call out to Us seeking succour.

And, mention, Zachariah (Zakariyyā, is substituted by [the following, idh nādā rabbahu …]) when he cried out to his Lord, saying: ‘My Lord, do not leave me without an heir, without a son to inherit from me, and You are the best of inheritors’, the One that endures after all of your creation has perished.

So We responded to him, in his call, and gave him John, as a son, and We restored [fertility to] his wife for him, and so she bore a child, having been barren. Truly they, those prophets that have been mentioned, would hasten to, [they would] hurry [to perform], good works, [namely] acts of obedience, and supplicate Us out of desire, for Our mercy, and in awe, of Our chastisement, and they were submissive before Us, humble in their worship.

And, mention Mary, the one who guarded her virginity, [the one who] preserved it from being taken, so We breathed into her of Our spirit, namely, Gabriel, when he breathed into the opening of her garment and she conceived Jesus. And We made her and her son a sign for all the worlds, that is, [for] mankind, jinn and angels, because she bore him without [having] a male [partner].

‘Truly this, creed of Islam, is your community, your religion, O you who are being addressed — in other words, you must adhere to it as, one community, [this being] a necessary state [of affairs], and I am your Lord, so worship Me’, affirm My Oneness.

But they, that is to say, some of those being addressed, fragmented their affair among themselves, that is, they became divided in the matter of their religion, and at variance over it — these are the [different] sects of the Jews and the Christians. God, exalted be He, says: All shall return to Us, and We will requite each according to his deeds.

And whoever performs righteous deeds, being a believer — no rejection, that is, no denial, will there be of his endeavour, and We will indeed write it down for him, by commanding the guardian angels to record it and then We requite him for it.

It is forbidden for any town, meaning [it is forbidden for] its people, which We have destroyed that they should (lā yarji‘ūna: the lā is extra) return, that is, their return to this world is prohibited.

Until (hattā, [a particle] expressing the end of the prohibition of their return) when Gog and Magog (read Ya’jūju wa-Ma’jūju or Yājūju wa-Mājūju, [these are] non-Arabic names of two tribes; there is an implicit genitive annexation before this clause, namely, the [gates of the] sadd, ‘the barrier’, [built] against them) are let loose (read futihat or futtihat) — and this will happen near the [time of the] Resurrection — and they slide down, they hasten, from every slope, [every] highland.

And the true promise, that is, the Day of Resurrection, draws near and behold, when, the gaze of the disbelievers will be fixed, on that Day, because of its severity, saying: ‘O (yā is for exclamation) woe to us!, [this is] our destruction! Verily, in the [life of the] world, we were oblivious to this, Day. Nay, but we were doing wrong’, to our souls by our denial of the messengers.

‘Truly you, O people of Mecca, and what you worship besides God, that is, other than Him, in the way of graven images, shall be fuel for Hell, [you shall be] its fodder; and you shall come to it’, [you shall] enter it.

Had these, graven images, been gods, as you claim, they would never have come to it, [they would never have] entered it, and they will all, both the worshippers and the worshipped, abide therein.

For them, for the worshippers, there will be groaning therein and they will not hear in it, anything, because of the ferocity with which it boils. When [‘Abd Allāh] Ibn al-Ziba‘rī said, ‘Ezra, Jesus and the angels were worshipped: they must also be in the Fire then, according to what has just been stated’, the following was revealed:

Indeed those to whom [the promise of] the best reward, the [best] status, went beforehand from Us, and among such are those who have just been mentioned: they will be kept away from it.

They will not hear the faintest sound from it and they will abide in what their souls desired, of bliss.

The Supreme Terror — which is that a servant be ordered off to the Fire, shall not grieve them, and the angels shall receive them, upon their exiting from their graves, saying to them: ‘This is your day, the one which you were promised’, during the [life of the] world.

The day (yawma is in the accusative because of an implied preceding udhkur, ‘mention’) when We shall roll up the heaven as the Scribe, [al-sijill being] the name of an angel, rolls up the written scroll, that is, the scroll of the son of Adam when he dies (the lām [of li’l-kitāb] is extra; alternatively, [one may read the verse so that] al-sijill is ‘the scroll’, and al-kitāb means al-maktūb ‘what is written’, in which case the lām [of li’l-kitāb] has the sense of [the particle] ‘alā, ‘over’; a variant reading [for li’l-kitāb] has the plural, li’l-kutub, ‘the books’). As We began the first creation, from non-existence, We shall repeat it, after making it non-existent (the kāf [of ka-mā, ‘as’] is semantically connected to nu‘īdu, ‘We shall repeat [it]’, and its [suffixed] pronoun [-hu, ‘it’] refers back to awwala, ‘the first’; the mā relates to the verbal noun) — a promise binding on Us (wa‘dan is in the accusative because [it is the direct object] of an implied preceding wa‘adnā, ‘We promised’, and [the clause] constitutes a confirmation of the import of the preceding [verse, 103]). Truly We shall do [that], which We have promised.

Certainly We wrote in the Scripture, (al-zabūr) means ‘the Book’, that is, the revealed Books of God, after the Remembrance, meaning the Mother of the Book (umm al-kitāb), which is [kept] with God: ‘Indeed the land, the land of Paradise, shall be inherited by My righteous servants’ — [this promise] applies to all righteous ones.

Indeed there is in this, Qur’ān, a proclamation, sufficient means for [securing] entry into Paradise, for a people who are devout, acting in accordance with [what is stipulated in] it.

We did not send you, O Muhammad (s), except as a mercy, that is, to [give] mercy, to all the worlds, [the worlds of] mankind and jinn through you.

Say: ‘All that is being revealed to me is that your God is One God, that is, the only thing that is being revealed to me with respect to the Divine is His Oneness. So will you submit?’, [will you] accede to [affirming] the Oneness of the Divine that is being revealed to me? (the interrogative is meant as an imperative).

But if they turn away, from this, say: ‘I have proclaimed to you, I have notified you of [my declaration of] war [on you], all alike (‘alā sawā’ is a circumstantial qualifier referring to both the subject of the verb and the object) that is to say, you are [all] equal in having knowledge of this: I shall not proceed independently without [having first informed] you, in order for you to make preparations, although I do not know whether near or far is that which you have been promised’, with respect to chastisement, or to the [Day of] Resurrection that comprises this [chastisement]; only God knows it.

Indeed He, exalted be He, knows whatever is spoken aloud, and what you and others do, and He knows what you conceal, both you and others, of secrets.

I do not know; perhaps that, which I have notified you of, but whose time is not known, may be a trial, a test, for you, to see how you will act, and an enjoyment for a while, that is, until your terms of life are concluded (this [second] clause [wa-matā‘un, ‘and an enjoyment’] counters the former, which is the object of the optative expressed by [the particle] la‘alla, ‘perhaps’; the second [clause] cannot be an optative).

Say (qul, a variant reading has qāla, ‘He said’): ‘My Lord! Judge, between me and my deniers, with truth, by [assigning] chastisement for them or victory [for me] over them. And so they were chastised at [the battles of] Badr, Uhud, Hunayn, al-Ahzāb and al-Khandaq and he [the Prophet] was given victory over them. And our Lord is the Compassionate One, Whose help is to be sought against what you allege’, when you invent lies against God, saying that ‘[God] has taken a son’ [cf. Q. 2:116]; and against me, when you say, ‘[he is] a sorcerer’ [cf. Q. 38:4], or against the Qur’ān, when you say, ‘[it is] poetry’ [cf. Q. 52:30].