Sūrat al-Raḥmān · Āyāt 1–32

What the passage says

The sūra opens, right after the basmala, by naming God simply as al-Raḥmān, the All-Beneficent (v.1) — the only chapter to open with a single divine Name — and the very first gift it lists is that He taught the Qurʾan (v.2), named before everything else because it is the greatest of His blessings. He then says He created man (v.3) and taught him articulate speech, bayān (v.4) — the faculty by which a person uncovers and conveys what is in the mind.

From the human gift it turns to the cosmos: the sun and the moon run by exact calculation (v.5), and the stemless plants and the trees prostrate (v.6) — bow in obedience — to God. He raised the heaven high and set up the Balance (v.7), then charges humanity not to cheat that Balance (v.8), but to keep weights with justice and never shortchange it (v.9). He spread out the earth for all creatures (v.10), filling it with fruits and date-palms in their sheaths (v.11) and grain with its husk and fragrant herbs (v.12). Then comes the refrain that will punctuate the whole sūra: which of your Lord's bounties will you two — jinn and mankind — deny? (v.13)

The catalogue resumes with origins: God created man from dry, ringing clay like a potter's (v.14) and created the jinn from a smokeless flame of fire (v.15) — refrain (v.16). He is Lord of the two easts and the two wests (v.17), the shifting sunrise and sunset points across the seasons — refrain (v.18). He let loose the two seas, the sweet and the salt, so they meet (v.19) yet set a barrier between them they never overstep (v.20) — refrain (v.21) — and from the two come pearl and coral (v.22) — refrain (v.23). The ships that ride the sea like mountains are His (v.24), even though human hands build them — refrain (v.25).

The passage then lifts toward the eternal: everything on the earth passes away (v.26), yet the Face of your Lord, full of majesty and munificence, abides (v.27) — refrain (v.28). Everyone in the heavens and earth turns to Him in need; every single day He is engaged in some new work (v.29) — refrain (v.30). And a warning closes the section: "Soon We shall turn Our full attention to you, you two weighty kinds" (v.31) — God devoting Himself to the reckoning of jinn and mankind — sealed once more with the refrain (v.32).

Convergence — where the six agree

• All six read the opening Name al-Raḥmān as belonging to God alone — "the One whose mercy embraces every thing" — while the related word raḥīm can describe created people. Ṭabarsī (Majmaʿ al-Bayān) frames it as God sealing the previous sūra with His Name and opening this one with it; the Enlightening Commentary and al-Baḥrānī (al-Burhān) both carry the saying of Imam al-Ṣādiq to the same effect.
• Every source treats the Qurʾan being named first, before even the creation of man, as deliberate — Ṭabāṭabāʾī (al-Mīzān) and the Enlightening Commentary explain the natural order is reversed precisely because the Qurʾan is the supreme blessing.
• On the prostrating plants (v.6), Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī (al-Tibyān), al-Mīzān, and the Enlightening Commentary agree the plain sense is that najm is the trunkless ground-plant and shajar the trunked tree, and that their "prostration" means submission and obedience to God — preferring this over the reading of najm as a star of the sky.
• All six read the dual refrain "which of your Lord's bounties will you both deny?" as addressed jointly to jinn and mankind, and the classical commentators together with al-Mīzān note the repetition works to confirm and drive home the enumerated blessings.
• There is broad agreement on the literal layer throughout: man from dry clay, the jinn from flame; the sweet and salt seas meeting yet held apart by a barzakh; the God-owned ships; and the abiding "Face" read non-literally — Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, al-Mīzān, and the Enlightening Commentary all gloss the surviving "Face" as God Himself (manifest by His proofs, or His Essence and noble attributes), never as a bodily face.

Divergence — where they differ

• Two interpretive registers run side by side, and this is the deepest split. The linguistic commentaries (Ṭūsī, Ṭabarsī) and the two English works keep verses 1–31 mainly on a cosmological-ethical plane. The two narrational sources, al-Qummī and al-Baḥrānī, transmit a sustained taʾwīl applying the passage to the Ahl al-Bayt: via a long report from Imam al-Riḍā, "He created man" is read as ʿAlī, "the Balance" as the Commander of the Faithful (so "do not cheat the Balance" becomes "do not disobey the Imam"), and the inner sense of the refrain as "the Prophet or his Legatee." These are presented as what those named sources transmit, not as the plain or only meaning.
• The sharpest single contrast is the sun and moon (v.5). Ṭūsī, Ṭabarsī, al-Mīzān, and the Enlightening Commentary read it purely as cosmic order — sun and moon running by reckoning. al-Qummī and al-Baḥrānī alone carry al-Riḍā's striking gloss that the two "are being punished," coding two cursed figures; this is the polemical layer of those sources, reproduced as their transmission, not endorsed.
• The "two seas = ʿAlī and Fāṭima" tradition (with the barzakh as the Prophet and the pearl and coral as al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn) is the primary meaning in al-Qummī and al-Baḥrānī, reported as a transmitted narration by Ṭabarsī after the literal reading, explicitly subordinated as a non-contradictory deeper layer by al-Mīzān and the Enlightening Commentary, and absent altogether from Ṭūsī.
• A few points belong to a single source. Ṭūsī uniquely adds a theological argument that bayān proves man was created not knowing and then taught — against those who claim innate knowledge needing only reminding. al-Mīzān uniquely argues that even the Day-of-Judgment punishments count among God's "blessings" relative to the whole order, which is why the refrain can follow verses of warning. al-Qummī and al-Baḥrānī uniquely add a second referent for "the two weighty kinds" (v.31) — the Qurʾan and the Prophet's progeny, invoking the ḥadīth al-thaqalayn — alongside the shared reading of jinn and mankind.
• Minor factual disagreements remain unresolved across the sources: whether the sūra is Medinan (the Enlightening Commentary, and al-Qummī's primary label) or "closest to Meccan" (al-Mīzān), with Ṭūsī recording the dispute openly; and how many times the refrain recurs across the whole sūra — al-Mīzān counts thirty-one, the Enlightening Commentary thirty-three.

Each scholar's full text is in the source panels below.