Sūra al-Baqara
Medinese: [consisting of] 286 or 287 verses.
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful:
[2:1] Alif lām mīm: God knows best what He means by these [letters].
[2:2] That, meaning, this, Book, which Muḥammad (ṣ) recites, in it there is no doubt, no uncertainty,that it is from God (the negation [lā rayba fīhi] is the predicate of dhālika; the use of the demonstrative here is intended to glorify [the Book]). A guidance (hudā is a second predicate, meaning that it [the Book] ‘guides’), for the God-fearing, namely, those that tend towards piety by adhering to commands and avoiding things prohibited, thereby guarding themselves from the Fire;
[2:3] who believe in, that is, who accept the truth of, the Unseen, what is hidden from them of the Resurrection, Paradise and the Fire; and maintain the prayer, that is to say, who perform it giving it its proper due; and of what We have provided them, that is, of what we have bestowed upon them, expend, in obedience to God;
[2:4] and who believe in what has been revealed to you, namely, the Qurʾān; and what was revealed before you, that is, the Torah, the Gospel and other [scriptures]; and of the Hereafter, they are certain, that is, they know [it is real].
[2:5] Those, as described in the way mentioned, are upon guidance from their Lord, those are the ones that will prosper, that is, who will succeed in entering Paradise and be saved from the Fire.
[2:6] As for the disbelievers, the likes of Abū Jahl, Abū Lahab and such; alike it is for them whether you have warned them or have not warned them, they do not believe, as God knows very well, so do not hope that they will believe (read a-andhartahum pronouncing both hamzas, or by not pronouncing the second, making it an alif instead, and inserting an alif between the one not pronounced and the other one, or leaving [this insertion]; al-indhār [‘warning’] is to give knowledge of something, and simultaneously instil an element of fear).
[2:7] God has set a seal on their hearts, impressing on them and making certain that no good enters them; and on their hearing, [in which He has] deposited something so that they cannot profit from the truth they hear; and on their eyes is a covering, that is, a veil so that they do not see the truth; and for them there will be a mighty chastisement, that is, intense and everlasting.
[2:8] The following was revealed concerning the hypocrites: and some people there are who say, ‘We believe in God and the Last Day’, that is, in the Day of Resurrection because it is the very last day; but they are not believers (the [plural] import of man [in man yaqūl, ‘who says’] is taken into account here, as expressed by a pronoun [hum] that expresses this [plural] meaning).
[2:9] They would deceive God and the believers, by manifesting the opposite of the unbelief they hide, so that they can avoid His rulings in this world; and only themselves they deceive (yukhādiʿūn), for the evil consequences of their deception will rebound upon them, as they are disgraced in this world when God makes known to His Prophet what they are hiding, and they will be punished in the Hereafter; and they are not aware, and they do not know that they are actually deceiving themselves (mukhādaʿa [although a third verbal form, from khādaʿa] actually denotes a one-way action, such as [when one says] ʿāqabtu alliṣṣa, ‘I punished the thief ’ [using the third verbal form ʿāqaba]; the mention of ‘God’ in [this statement] is for [rhetorical] effect; a variant reading [for wa-mā yukhādiʿūna] has wa-mā yakhdaʿūna).
[2:10] In their hearts is a sickness: doubt and hypocrisy, which ails their hearts, debilitating them; and God has increased their sickness with what He has revealed in the Qurʾān, since they disbelieve it; and there awaits them a painful chastisement because they used to lie (read yukadhdhibūn to imply [that they used to call] the Prophet of God [a liar], or yakdhibūn to imply their [mendacity when] saying ‘we believe’).
[2:11] When it is said to them, that is, these latter, ‘Do not spread corruption in the land’, through unbelief and hindering [people from] faith, They say, ‘We are only putting things right’, that is, ‘we are not engaging in corruption’. God, exalted be He, refutes them, saying:
[2:12] Truly (a-lā, ‘truly’, is for alerting), intended emphatically, they are the agents of corruption, but they perceive, this, not.
[2:13] When it is said to them, ‘Believe as the people believe’, that is, as the Companions of the Prophet (ṣ), They say, ‘Shall we believe as fools believe?’, that is, as the ignorant do? No we do not follow their way. The exalted One refutes them, saying: Truly, they are the foolish ones, but they know, this, not.
[2:14] When they meet (laqū is actually laquyū, but the ḍamma has been omitted, being too cumbersome for pronunciation; likewise the yāʾ [is omitted], because it is unvocalised and is followed by a wāw); those who believe, they say, ‘We believe’; but when they go apart, away from them and return, to their devils, their leaders, they say, ‘We are with you, in religion; we were only mocking, them [the believers] by feigning belief.
[2:15] God [Himself] mocks them, requiting them for their mockery, leaving them, that is, giving them respite, in their insolence, that is, in their transgressing the limits of unbelief; bewildered, wavering, in perplexity (yaʿmahūn is a circumstantial qualifier).
[2:16] Those are they who have bought error for guidance, that is, they have exchanged the latter for the former; so their commerce has not profited them, that is to say, they have gained nothing from it, indeed, they have lost, because their destination is the Fire, made everlasting for them; nor are they guided, in what they did.
[2:17] Their likeness, the way they are in their hypocrisy, is as the likeness of one who kindled, that is, [one who] lit a fire in darkness, and when it illumined all about him, so that he is able to see, and to feel warm and secure from those he feared, God took away their light, extinguishing it (the plural pronoun [in nūrihim] takes into account the [plural] import of alladhī); and left them in darkness, unable to see, what is around them, confused as to the way, in fear; likewise are those who have found [temporary] security by professing faith, but who will meet with terror and punishment upon death; these [last] are:
[2:18] deaf, to the truth, so that they cannot hear it and accept it; dumb, mute as regards goodness, unable to speak of it; and, blind, to the path of guidance, so that they cannot perceive it; they shall not return, from error.
[2:19] Or, the likeness of them is as a cloudburst, that is, [the likeness of them is] as people are during rain (ka-ṣayyib: the term is originally ṣayyūb, from [the verb] ṣāba, yaṣūbu, meaning ‘it came down’); out of the heaven, out of the clouds, in which clouds is darkness, layer upon layer, and thunder, the angel in charge of them [sc. the clouds]; it is also said that this [thunder] is actually the sound of his voice; and lightning, the flash caused by his voice which he uses to drive them — they, the people under the rain, put their fingers, that is, their fingertips, in their ears against, because of, the thunderclaps, the violent sound of thunder, in order not to hear it, cautious of, fearful of, death, if they were to hear it. Similar is the case with these: when the Qurʾān is revealed, in which there is mention of the unbelief that is like darkness, the threat of punishment that is like the sound of thunder, and the clear arguments that are like the clear lightning, they shut their ears in order not to hear it and thereby incline towards [true] faith and abandon their religion, which for them would be death; and God encompasses the disbelievers in both knowledge and power, so they cannot escape Him.
[2:20] The lightning well-nigh, almost, snatches away their sight, that is, takes it away swiftly; whensoever it gives them light, they walk in it, in its light; and when the darkness is over them, they stop, that is, they stand still: a simile of the perturbation that the Qurʾānic arguments cause in their hearts, and of their acknowledging the truths of what they love to hear and recoiling from what they detest; had God willed, He would have taken away their hearing and their sight, that is, the exterior faculty, in the same way that He took away their inner one; Truly, God has power over all things, [that] He wills, as for example, His taking away of the above-mentioned.
[2:21] O people, of Mecca, worship, profess the oneness of, your Lord Who created you, made you when you were nothing, and created those that were before you; so that you may be fearful, of His punishment by worshipping Him (laʿalla, ‘so that’, is essentially an optative, but when spoken by God it denotes an affirmative),
[2:22] He Who assigned to you, created [for you], the earth for a couch, like a carpet that is laid out, neither extremely hard, nor extremely soft so as to make it impossible to stand firm upon it; and heaven for an edifice, like a roof; and sent down from the heaven water, wherewith He brought forth, all types of, fruits for your provision; so set not up compeers to God, that is partners in worship, while you know that He is the Creator, that you create not and that only One that creates can be God.
[2:23] And if you are in doubt, in uncertainty, concerning what We have revealed to Our servant, Muḥammad (ṣ), of the Qurʾān, that it is from God, then bring a sūra like it, that is also revealed (min mithlihi: min is explicative, that is, a sūra like it in its eloquence, fine arrangement and its bestowal of knowledge of the Unseen; a sūra is a passage with a beginning and end made up of a minimum of three verses); and call your witnesses, those other gods that you worship, besides God, that is, other than Him, so that it can be seen, if you are truthful, in [your claim] that Muḥammad (ṣ) speaks it from himself. So do this, for you are also fluent speakers of Arabic like him. When they could not do this, God said:
[2:24] And if you do not, do what was mentioned because you are incapable, and you will not (a parenthetical statement), that is, never [will you be able to], because of its inimitability, then fear, through belief in God and [belief] that this is not the words of a human, the Fire, whose fuel is men, disbelievers, and stones, like their very idols, indicating that its heat is extreme, since it burns with the [stones] mentioned, unlike the fires of this world that burn with wood and similar materials; prepared, and made ready, for disbelievers, so that they are punished in it (this [phrase, uʿiddat liʾl-kāfirīna, ‘prepared for disbelievers’] is either a new sentence or a sustained circumstantial qualifier).
[2:25] And give good tidings to, inform, those who believe, who have faith in God, and perform righteous deeds, such as the obligatory and supererogatory [rituals], that theirs shall be Gardens, of trees, and habitations, underneath which, that is, underneath these trees and palaces, rivers run (tajrī min taḥtihā’l-anhāru), that is, there are waters in it (al-nahr is the place in which water flows [and is so called] because the water carves [yanhar] its way through it; the reference to it as ‘running’ is figurative); whensoever they are provided with fruits therefrom, that is, whenever they are given to eat from these gardens, they shall say, ‘This is what, that is, the like of what we were provided with before’, that is, before this, in Paradise, since its fruits are similar (and this is evidenced by [the following statement]): they shall be given it, the provision, in perfect semblance, that is, resembling one another in colour, but different in taste; and there for them shall be spouses, of houris and others, purified, from menstruation and impurities; therein they shall abide: dwelling therein forever, neither perishing nor departing therefrom. And when the Jews said, ‘Why does God strike a similitude about flies, where He says, And if a fly should rob them of anything [Q. 22:73] and about a spider, where He says, As the likeness of the spider [Q. 29:41]: what does God want with these vile creatures? God then revealed the following:
[2:26] God is not ashamed to strike, to make, a similitude (mathal: is the first direct object; mā either represents an indefinite noun described by what comes after it and constitutes a second direct object, meaning ‘whatever that similitude may be’; or it [the mā] is extra to emphasise the vileness [involved], so that what follows constitutes the second direct object); even of a gnat, (baʿūḍa is the singular of baʿūḍ), that is, small flies; or anything above it, that is, larger than it, so that this explanation is not affected [by the size of the creature] with regard to the judgement [God is making]; as for the believers, they know it, the similitude, is the truth, established and given in this instance, from their Lord; but as for disbelievers, they say, ‘What did God desire by this for a similitude?’ (mathalan is a specification, meaning, ‘by this similitude’; mā is an interrogative of rejection and is the subject; dhā means alladhī, whose relative clause contains its predicate, in other words, ‘what use is there in it?’). God then responds to them saying: Thereby, that is, by this similitude, He leads many astray, from the truth on account of their disbelieving in it, and thereby He guides many, believers on account of their belief in it; and thereby He leads none astray except the wicked, those that reject obedience to Him.
[2:27] Those such as, He has described, break the covenant of God, the contract He made with them in the [revealed] Books to belief in Muḥammad (ṣ), after its solemn binding, after it has been confirmed with them, and such as cut what God has commanded should be joined, of belief in the Prophet, of kinship and other matters (an [in the phrase an yūṣala, ‘that it be joined’] substitutes for the pronoun [suffixed] in bihi [of the preceding words mā amara Llāhu bihi, ‘that which God has commanded’]); and such as do corruption in the land, by way of their transgressing and impeding faith, they, the ones thus described, shall be the losers, since, they shall end up in the Fire, made everlasting for them.
[2:28] How do you, people of Mecca, disbelieve in God, when you were dead, semen inside loins, and He gave you life, in the womb and in this world by breathing Spirit into you (the interrogative here is either intended to provoke amazement at their [persistent] unbelief despite the evidence established, or intended as a rebuke); then He shall make you dead, after your terms of life are completed, then He shall give you life, at the Resurrection, then to Him you shall be returned!, after resurrection, whereupon He shall requite you according to your deeds; and He states, as proof of the Resurrection, when they denied it:
[2:29] He it is Who created for you all that is in the earth, that is, the earth and all that is in it, so that you may benefit from and learn lessons from it; then, after creating the earth, He turned to, that is, He made His object, heaven and levelled them (fa-sawwāhunna: the pronoun [-hunna] refers to ‘heaven’, since, it [heaven] is implicit in the import of the sentence attributed to it [the pronoun]), that is to say, He made them thus, as [He says] in another verse, [fa-qaḍāhunna] so He determined them [Q. 41:12]) seven heavens and He has knowledge of all things, in their totality and in their individual detail, so do you not then think that the One who has the power to create this to begin with, which is much greater than what you are, also has the power to bring you back [after death]?
[2:30] And, mention, O Muḥammad (ṣ), when your Lord said to the angels, ‘I am appointing on earth a vicegerent’, who shall act as My deputy, by implementing My rulings therein — and this [vicegerent] was Adam; They said, ‘What, will You appoint therein one who will do corruption therein, through disobedience, and shed blood, spilling it through killing, just as the progeny of the jinn did, for they used to inhabit it, but when they became corrupted God sent down the angels against them and they were driven away to islands and into the mountains; while we glorify, continuously, You with praise, that is, “We say Glory and Praise be to You”, and sanctify You?’, that is, ‘We exalt You as transcendent above what does not befit You?; the lām [of laka, ‘You’] is extra, and the sentence [wa-nuqaddisu laka, ‘We sanctify You’] is a circumstantial qualifier, the import being, ‘thus, we are more entitled to be Your vicegerents’); He, exalted be He, said, ‘Assuredly, I know what you know not’, of the benefits of making Adam a vicegerent and of the fact that among his progeny will be the obedient and the transgressor, and justice will prevail between them. They said, ‘God will never create anything more noble in His eyes than us nor more knowledgeable, since we have been created before it and have seen what it has not seen. God then created Adam from the surface of the earth (adīm al-arḍ [adīm literally means ‘skin’]), taking a handful of all its colours and mixing it with different waters, then made him upright and breathed into him the Spirit and he thus became a living being with senses, after having been inanimate.
[2:31] And He taught Adam the names, that is, the names of things named, all of them, by placing knowledge of them into his heart; then He presented them, these names, the majority of which concerned intellectual beings, to the angels and said, to them in reproach, ‘Now tell Me, inform Me, the names of these, things named, if you speak truly’, in your claim that I would not create anything more knowledgeable than you, or that you are more deserving of this vicegerency; the response to the conditional sentence is intimated by what precedes it.
Medinese: [consisting of] 286 or 287 verses.
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful:
[2:1] Alif lām mīm: God knows best what He means by these [letters].
[2:2] That, meaning, this, Book, which Muḥammad (ṣ) recites, in it there is no doubt, no uncertainty,that it is from God (the negation [lā rayba fīhi] is the predicate of dhālika; the use of the demonstrative here is intended to glorify [the Book]). A guidance (hudā is a second predicate, meaning that it [the Book] ‘guides’), for the God-fearing, namely, those that tend towards piety by adhering to commands and avoiding things prohibited, thereby guarding themselves from the Fire;
[2:3] who believe in, that is, who accept the truth of, the Unseen, what is hidden from them of the Resurrection, Paradise and the Fire; and maintain the prayer, that is to say, who perform it giving it its proper due; and of what We have provided them, that is, of what we have bestowed upon them, expend, in obedience to God;
[2:4] and who believe in what has been revealed to you, namely, the Qurʾān; and what was revealed before you, that is, the Torah, the Gospel and other [scriptures]; and of the Hereafter, they are certain, that is, they know [it is real].
[2:5] Those, as described in the way mentioned, are upon guidance from their Lord, those are the ones that will prosper, that is, who will succeed in entering Paradise and be saved from the Fire.
[2:6] As for the disbelievers, the likes of Abū Jahl, Abū Lahab and such; alike it is for them whether you have warned them or have not warned them, they do not believe, as God knows very well, so do not hope that they will believe (read a-andhartahum pronouncing both hamzas, or by not pronouncing the second, making it an alif instead, and inserting an alif between the one not pronounced and the other one, or leaving [this insertion]; al-indhār [‘warning’] is to give knowledge of something, and simultaneously instil an element of fear).
[2:7] God has set a seal on their hearts, impressing on them and making certain that no good enters them; and on their hearing, [in which He has] deposited something so that they cannot profit from the truth they hear; and on their eyes is a covering, that is, a veil so that they do not see the truth; and for them there will be a mighty chastisement, that is, intense and everlasting.
[2:8] The following was revealed concerning the hypocrites: and some people there are who say, ‘We believe in God and the Last Day’, that is, in the Day of Resurrection because it is the very last day; but they are not believers (the [plural] import of man [in man yaqūl, ‘who says’] is taken into account here, as expressed by a pronoun [hum] that expresses this [plural] meaning).
[2:9] They would deceive God and the believers, by manifesting the opposite of the unbelief they hide, so that they can avoid His rulings in this world; and only themselves they deceive (yukhādiʿūn), for the evil consequences of their deception will rebound upon them, as they are disgraced in this world when God makes known to His Prophet what they are hiding, and they will be punished in the Hereafter; and they are not aware, and they do not know that they are actually deceiving themselves (mukhādaʿa [although a third verbal form, from khādaʿa] actually denotes a one-way action, such as [when one says] ʿāqabtu alliṣṣa, ‘I punished the thief ’ [using the third verbal form ʿāqaba]; the mention of ‘God’ in [this statement] is for [rhetorical] effect; a variant reading [for wa-mā yukhādiʿūna] has wa-mā yakhdaʿūna).
[2:10] In their hearts is a sickness: doubt and hypocrisy, which ails their hearts, debilitating them; and God has increased their sickness with what He has revealed in the Qurʾān, since they disbelieve it; and there awaits them a painful chastisement because they used to lie (read yukadhdhibūn to imply [that they used to call] the Prophet of God [a liar], or yakdhibūn to imply their [mendacity when] saying ‘we believe’).
[2:11] When it is said to them, that is, these latter, ‘Do not spread corruption in the land’, through unbelief and hindering [people from] faith, They say, ‘We are only putting things right’, that is, ‘we are not engaging in corruption’. God, exalted be He, refutes them, saying:
[2:12] Truly (a-lā, ‘truly’, is for alerting), intended emphatically, they are the agents of corruption, but they perceive, this, not.
[2:13] When it is said to them, ‘Believe as the people believe’, that is, as the Companions of the Prophet (ṣ), They say, ‘Shall we believe as fools believe?’, that is, as the ignorant do? No we do not follow their way. The exalted One refutes them, saying: Truly, they are the foolish ones, but they know, this, not.
[2:14] When they meet (laqū is actually laquyū, but the ḍamma has been omitted, being too cumbersome for pronunciation; likewise the yāʾ [is omitted], because it is unvocalised and is followed by a wāw); those who believe, they say, ‘We believe’; but when they go apart, away from them and return, to their devils, their leaders, they say, ‘We are with you, in religion; we were only mocking, them [the believers] by feigning belief.
[2:15] God [Himself] mocks them, requiting them for their mockery, leaving them, that is, giving them respite, in their insolence, that is, in their transgressing the limits of unbelief; bewildered, wavering, in perplexity (yaʿmahūn is a circumstantial qualifier).
[2:16] Those are they who have bought error for guidance, that is, they have exchanged the latter for the former; so their commerce has not profited them, that is to say, they have gained nothing from it, indeed, they have lost, because their destination is the Fire, made everlasting for them; nor are they guided, in what they did.
[2:17] Their likeness, the way they are in their hypocrisy, is as the likeness of one who kindled, that is, [one who] lit a fire in darkness, and when it illumined all about him, so that he is able to see, and to feel warm and secure from those he feared, God took away their light, extinguishing it (the plural pronoun [in nūrihim] takes into account the [plural] import of alladhī); and left them in darkness, unable to see, what is around them, confused as to the way, in fear; likewise are those who have found [temporary] security by professing faith, but who will meet with terror and punishment upon death; these [last] are:
[2:18] deaf, to the truth, so that they cannot hear it and accept it; dumb, mute as regards goodness, unable to speak of it; and, blind, to the path of guidance, so that they cannot perceive it; they shall not return, from error.
[2:19] Or, the likeness of them is as a cloudburst, that is, [the likeness of them is] as people are during rain (ka-ṣayyib: the term is originally ṣayyūb, from [the verb] ṣāba, yaṣūbu, meaning ‘it came down’); out of the heaven, out of the clouds, in which clouds is darkness, layer upon layer, and thunder, the angel in charge of them [sc. the clouds]; it is also said that this [thunder] is actually the sound of his voice; and lightning, the flash caused by his voice which he uses to drive them — they, the people under the rain, put their fingers, that is, their fingertips, in their ears against, because of, the thunderclaps, the violent sound of thunder, in order not to hear it, cautious of, fearful of, death, if they were to hear it. Similar is the case with these: when the Qurʾān is revealed, in which there is mention of the unbelief that is like darkness, the threat of punishment that is like the sound of thunder, and the clear arguments that are like the clear lightning, they shut their ears in order not to hear it and thereby incline towards [true] faith and abandon their religion, which for them would be death; and God encompasses the disbelievers in both knowledge and power, so they cannot escape Him.
[2:20] The lightning well-nigh, almost, snatches away their sight, that is, takes it away swiftly; whensoever it gives them light, they walk in it, in its light; and when the darkness is over them, they stop, that is, they stand still: a simile of the perturbation that the Qurʾānic arguments cause in their hearts, and of their acknowledging the truths of what they love to hear and recoiling from what they detest; had God willed, He would have taken away their hearing and their sight, that is, the exterior faculty, in the same way that He took away their inner one; Truly, God has power over all things, [that] He wills, as for example, His taking away of the above-mentioned.
[2:21] O people, of Mecca, worship, profess the oneness of, your Lord Who created you, made you when you were nothing, and created those that were before you; so that you may be fearful, of His punishment by worshipping Him (laʿalla, ‘so that’, is essentially an optative, but when spoken by God it denotes an affirmative),
[2:22] He Who assigned to you, created [for you], the earth for a couch, like a carpet that is laid out, neither extremely hard, nor extremely soft so as to make it impossible to stand firm upon it; and heaven for an edifice, like a roof; and sent down from the heaven water, wherewith He brought forth, all types of, fruits for your provision; so set not up compeers to God, that is partners in worship, while you know that He is the Creator, that you create not and that only One that creates can be God.
[2:23] And if you are in doubt, in uncertainty, concerning what We have revealed to Our servant, Muḥammad (ṣ), of the Qurʾān, that it is from God, then bring a sūra like it, that is also revealed (min mithlihi: min is explicative, that is, a sūra like it in its eloquence, fine arrangement and its bestowal of knowledge of the Unseen; a sūra is a passage with a beginning and end made up of a minimum of three verses); and call your witnesses, those other gods that you worship, besides God, that is, other than Him, so that it can be seen, if you are truthful, in [your claim] that Muḥammad (ṣ) speaks it from himself. So do this, for you are also fluent speakers of Arabic like him. When they could not do this, God said:
[2:24] And if you do not, do what was mentioned because you are incapable, and you will not (a parenthetical statement), that is, never [will you be able to], because of its inimitability, then fear, through belief in God and [belief] that this is not the words of a human, the Fire, whose fuel is men, disbelievers, and stones, like their very idols, indicating that its heat is extreme, since it burns with the [stones] mentioned, unlike the fires of this world that burn with wood and similar materials; prepared, and made ready, for disbelievers, so that they are punished in it (this [phrase, uʿiddat liʾl-kāfirīna, ‘prepared for disbelievers’] is either a new sentence or a sustained circumstantial qualifier).
[2:25] And give good tidings to, inform, those who believe, who have faith in God, and perform righteous deeds, such as the obligatory and supererogatory [rituals], that theirs shall be Gardens, of trees, and habitations, underneath which, that is, underneath these trees and palaces, rivers run (tajrī min taḥtihā’l-anhāru), that is, there are waters in it (al-nahr is the place in which water flows [and is so called] because the water carves [yanhar] its way through it; the reference to it as ‘running’ is figurative); whensoever they are provided with fruits therefrom, that is, whenever they are given to eat from these gardens, they shall say, ‘This is what, that is, the like of what we were provided with before’, that is, before this, in Paradise, since its fruits are similar (and this is evidenced by [the following statement]): they shall be given it, the provision, in perfect semblance, that is, resembling one another in colour, but different in taste; and there for them shall be spouses, of houris and others, purified, from menstruation and impurities; therein they shall abide: dwelling therein forever, neither perishing nor departing therefrom. And when the Jews said, ‘Why does God strike a similitude about flies, where He says, And if a fly should rob them of anything [Q. 22:73] and about a spider, where He says, As the likeness of the spider [Q. 29:41]: what does God want with these vile creatures? God then revealed the following:
[2:26] God is not ashamed to strike, to make, a similitude (mathal: is the first direct object; mā either represents an indefinite noun described by what comes after it and constitutes a second direct object, meaning ‘whatever that similitude may be’; or it [the mā] is extra to emphasise the vileness [involved], so that what follows constitutes the second direct object); even of a gnat, (baʿūḍa is the singular of baʿūḍ), that is, small flies; or anything above it, that is, larger than it, so that this explanation is not affected [by the size of the creature] with regard to the judgement [God is making]; as for the believers, they know it, the similitude, is the truth, established and given in this instance, from their Lord; but as for disbelievers, they say, ‘What did God desire by this for a similitude?’ (mathalan is a specification, meaning, ‘by this similitude’; mā is an interrogative of rejection and is the subject; dhā means alladhī, whose relative clause contains its predicate, in other words, ‘what use is there in it?’). God then responds to them saying: Thereby, that is, by this similitude, He leads many astray, from the truth on account of their disbelieving in it, and thereby He guides many, believers on account of their belief in it; and thereby He leads none astray except the wicked, those that reject obedience to Him.
[2:27] Those such as, He has described, break the covenant of God, the contract He made with them in the [revealed] Books to belief in Muḥammad (ṣ), after its solemn binding, after it has been confirmed with them, and such as cut what God has commanded should be joined, of belief in the Prophet, of kinship and other matters (an [in the phrase an yūṣala, ‘that it be joined’] substitutes for the pronoun [suffixed] in bihi [of the preceding words mā amara Llāhu bihi, ‘that which God has commanded’]); and such as do corruption in the land, by way of their transgressing and impeding faith, they, the ones thus described, shall be the losers, since, they shall end up in the Fire, made everlasting for them.
[2:28] How do you, people of Mecca, disbelieve in God, when you were dead, semen inside loins, and He gave you life, in the womb and in this world by breathing Spirit into you (the interrogative here is either intended to provoke amazement at their [persistent] unbelief despite the evidence established, or intended as a rebuke); then He shall make you dead, after your terms of life are completed, then He shall give you life, at the Resurrection, then to Him you shall be returned!, after resurrection, whereupon He shall requite you according to your deeds; and He states, as proof of the Resurrection, when they denied it:
[2:29] He it is Who created for you all that is in the earth, that is, the earth and all that is in it, so that you may benefit from and learn lessons from it; then, after creating the earth, He turned to, that is, He made His object, heaven and levelled them (fa-sawwāhunna: the pronoun [-hunna] refers to ‘heaven’, since, it [heaven] is implicit in the import of the sentence attributed to it [the pronoun]), that is to say, He made them thus, as [He says] in another verse, [fa-qaḍāhunna] so He determined them [Q. 41:12]) seven heavens and He has knowledge of all things, in their totality and in their individual detail, so do you not then think that the One who has the power to create this to begin with, which is much greater than what you are, also has the power to bring you back [after death]?
[2:30] And, mention, O Muḥammad (ṣ), when your Lord said to the angels, ‘I am appointing on earth a vicegerent’, who shall act as My deputy, by implementing My rulings therein — and this [vicegerent] was Adam; They said, ‘What, will You appoint therein one who will do corruption therein, through disobedience, and shed blood, spilling it through killing, just as the progeny of the jinn did, for they used to inhabit it, but when they became corrupted God sent down the angels against them and they were driven away to islands and into the mountains; while we glorify, continuously, You with praise, that is, “We say Glory and Praise be to You”, and sanctify You?’, that is, ‘We exalt You as transcendent above what does not befit You?; the lām [of laka, ‘You’] is extra, and the sentence [wa-nuqaddisu laka, ‘We sanctify You’] is a circumstantial qualifier, the import being, ‘thus, we are more entitled to be Your vicegerents’); He, exalted be He, said, ‘Assuredly, I know what you know not’, of the benefits of making Adam a vicegerent and of the fact that among his progeny will be the obedient and the transgressor, and justice will prevail between them. They said, ‘God will never create anything more noble in His eyes than us nor more knowledgeable, since we have been created before it and have seen what it has not seen. God then created Adam from the surface of the earth (adīm al-arḍ [adīm literally means ‘skin’]), taking a handful of all its colours and mixing it with different waters, then made him upright and breathed into him the Spirit and he thus became a living being with senses, after having been inanimate.
[2:31] And He taught Adam the names, that is, the names of things named, all of them, by placing knowledge of them into his heart; then He presented them, these names, the majority of which concerned intellectual beings, to the angels and said, to them in reproach, ‘Now tell Me, inform Me, the names of these, things named, if you speak truly’, in your claim that I would not create anything more knowledgeable than you, or that you are more deserving of this vicegerency; the response to the conditional sentence is intimated by what precedes it.