Sūrah 62 · Āyāt 1–4

al-Jumu'a 1-4 — The glorifying cosmos and the unlettered Messenger

The sura opens as its neighbours do, with divine glorification, then moves at once to its real subject: the favour of prophethood. All present sources read v.1 as a demonstrative preface. The Enlightening Commentary notes that the previous sura opened with the imperative "glorify" and this one with the indicative "glorifies," so that glorification is shown as past, present and future; al-Mizan and Tabarsi make the same point from the imperfect verb yusabbih, denoting perpetuity. On the four names, Tusi, Tabarsi and al-Mizan converge: al-Malik (sole disposer of all things), al-Quddus (pure of every defect), al-'Aziz (the unvanquished) and al-Hakim (whose act is never in vain). al-Mizan builds these into an argument: because creation glorifies God through its very neediness, He — being Holy, Mighty and Wise — may legislate a religion needing nothing from His servants, unfrustrated by their rebellion, and never in vain.

On v.2 the sources debate al-ummiyyun. Tabarsi and Tusi report the majority view (Mujahid, Qatada) that it means the Arabs, an unlettered nation, with the minority reading "the people of Mecca" (umm al-qura); both stress the evidentiary favour of an unlettered prophet — matching prior scriptures' glad tidings and refuting any charge that he borrowed his wisdom. al-Mizan adds that the Prophet is "from among them" in kind though sent to all mankind, and explains why purification (tazkiya) precedes teaching here, unlike Abraham's supplication (2:129): this verse describes actual nurture, where character is trained before instruction. A striking divergence appears on the word ummi itself: Qummi and al-Burhan (both citing 'Ali b. Ibrahim and, in al-Burhan, a chain to Imam al-Jawad) insist the Prophet was not illiterate — "by God he read and wrote in seventy-odd tongues" — and that ummi means only "of the mother-town, Mecca." This contrasts with the Enlightening Commentary's more conventional gloss (unschooled "but what he learned from his mother").

Verses 3-4 look beyond the first hearers. Tabarsi, Tusi, Qummi and al-Burhan gloss "others of them not yet joined them" as those who entered Islam after the Companions — every generation until the Resurrection — and several add the non-Arabs. All the Shia sources and the Enlightening Commentary carry the celebrated report that the Prophet laid his hand on Salman's shoulder: "Were faith at the Pleiades, men from these — the Persians — would attain it" (web-verified as Bukhari and Muslim, Fada'il ahl Faris). On v.4 Tabarsi attaches the tradition of the poor Companions taught takbir, tasbih and tahlil as their "charity," to which the Prophet answered "That is God's grace." al-Burhan alone gives v.4 a walaya turn — "God's grace" as the grace of extolling the House of Muhammad, with angels enveloping those who gather to praise them — rendered here strictly as it is attributed.