إِنَّ ٱلَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا۟ لَن تُغْنِىَ عَنْهُمْ أَمْوَٰلُهُمْ وَلَآ أَوْلَٰدُهُم مِّنَ ٱللَّهِ شَيْـًۭٔا ۖ وَأُو۟لَٰٓئِكَ هُمْ وَقُودُ ٱلنَّارِ
As for the faithless, neither their wealth nor their children shall avail them anything against Allah; it is they who will be fuel for the Fire;
كَدَأْبِ ءَالِ فِرْعَوْنَ وَٱلَّذِينَ مِن قَبْلِهِمْ ۚ كَذَّبُوا۟ بِـَٔايَٰتِنَا فَأَخَذَهُمُ ٱللَّهُ بِذُنُوبِهِمْ ۗ وَٱللَّهُ شَدِيدُ ٱلْعِقَابِ
as in the case of Pharaoh’s clan and those who were before them, who denied Our signs. So Allah seized them for their sins, and Allah is severe in retribution.
قُل لِّلَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا۟ سَتُغْلَبُونَ وَتُحْشَرُونَ إِلَىٰ جَهَنَّمَ ۚ وَبِئْسَ ٱلْمِهَادُ
Say to the faithless, ‘You shall be overcome and mustered toward hell, and it is an evil resting place.’
قَدْ كَانَ لَكُمْ ءَايَةٌۭ فِى فِئَتَيْنِ ٱلْتَقَتَا ۖ فِئَةٌۭ تُقَٰتِلُ فِى سَبِيلِ ٱللَّهِ وَأُخْرَىٰ كَافِرَةٌۭ يَرَوْنَهُم مِّثْلَيْهِمْ رَأْىَ ٱلْعَيْنِ ۚ وَٱللَّهُ يُؤَيِّدُ بِنَصْرِهِۦ مَن يَشَآءُ ۗ إِنَّ فِى ذَٰلِكَ لَعِبْرَةًۭ لِّأُو۟لِى ٱلْأَبْصَٰرِ
There was certainly a sign for you in the two hosts that met: one host fighting in the way of Allah and the other faithless, who saw them as visibly twice as many. Allah strengthens whomever He wishes with His help. There is indeed a moral in that for those who have insight.
زُيِّنَ لِلنَّاسِ حُبُّ ٱلشَّهَوَٰتِ مِنَ ٱلنِّسَآءِ وَٱلْبَنِينَ وَٱلْقَنَٰطِيرِ ٱلْمُقَنطَرَةِ مِنَ ٱلذَّهَبِ وَٱلْفِضَّةِ وَٱلْخَيْلِ ٱلْمُسَوَّمَةِ وَٱلْأَنْعَٰمِ وَٱلْحَرْثِ ۗ ذَٰلِكَ مَتَٰعُ ٱلْحَيَوٰةِ ٱلدُّنْيَا ۖ وَٱللَّهُ عِندَهُۥ حُسْنُ ٱلْمَـَٔابِ
The love of [worldly] allures, including women and children, accumulated piles of gold and silver, horses of mark, livestock, and farms has been made to seem decorous to mankind. Those are the wares of the life of this world, but the goodness of one’s ultimate destination lies near Allah.
۞ قُلْ أَؤُنَبِّئُكُم بِخَيْرٍۢ مِّن ذَٰلِكُمْ ۚ لِلَّذِينَ ٱتَّقَوْا۟ عِندَ رَبِّهِمْ جَنَّٰتٌۭ تَجْرِى مِن تَحْتِهَا ٱلْأَنْهَٰرُ خَٰلِدِينَ فِيهَا وَأَزْوَٰجٌۭ مُّطَهَّرَةٌۭ وَرِضْوَٰنٌۭ مِّنَ ٱللَّهِ ۗ وَٱللَّهُ بَصِيرٌۢ بِٱلْعِبَادِ
Say, ‘Shall I inform you of something better than that? For those who are Godwary there will be gardens near their Lord, with streams running in them, to remain in them [forever], and chaste mates, and Allah’s pleasure.’ And Allah watches His servants.
ٱلَّذِينَ يَقُولُونَ رَبَّنَآ إِنَّنَآ ءَامَنَّا فَٱغْفِرْ لَنَا ذُنُوبَنَا وَقِنَا عَذَابَ ٱلنَّارِ
Those who say, ‘Our Lord! Indeed, we have faith. So forgive us our sins, and save us from the punishment of the Fire.’
ٱلصَّٰبِرِينَ وَٱلصَّٰدِقِينَ وَٱلْقَٰنِتِينَ وَٱلْمُنفِقِينَ وَٱلْمُسْتَغْفِرِينَ بِٱلْأَسْحَارِ
[They are] patient and truthful, obedient and charitable, and they plead for [Allah’s] forgiveness at dawns.
شَهِدَ ٱللَّهُ أَنَّهُۥ لَآ إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ وَٱلْمَلَٰٓئِكَةُ وَأُو۟لُوا۟ ٱلْعِلْمِ قَآئِمًۢا بِٱلْقِسْطِ ۚ لَآ إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ ٱلْعَزِيزُ ٱلْحَكِيمُ
Allah, maintainer of justice, the Almighty and the All-wise, besides whom there is no god, bears witness that there is no god except Him, and [so do] the angels and those who possess knowledge.
إِنَّ ٱلدِّينَ عِندَ ٱللَّهِ ٱلْإِسْلَٰمُ ۗ وَمَا ٱخْتَلَفَ ٱلَّذِينَ أُوتُوا۟ ٱلْكِتَٰبَ إِلَّا مِنۢ بَعْدِ مَا جَآءَهُمُ ٱلْعِلْمُ بَغْيًۢا بَيْنَهُمْ ۗ وَمَن يَكْفُرْ بِـَٔايَٰتِ ٱللَّهِ فَإِنَّ ٱللَّهَ سَرِيعُ ٱلْحِسَابِ
Indeed, with Allah religion is Islam, and those who were given the Book did not differ except after knowledge had come to them, out of envy among themselves. And whoever denies Allah’s signs [should know that] Allah is swift at reckoning.
فَإِنْ حَآجُّوكَ فَقُلْ أَسْلَمْتُ وَجْهِىَ لِلَّهِ وَمَنِ ٱتَّبَعَنِ ۗ وَقُل لِّلَّذِينَ أُوتُوا۟ ٱلْكِتَٰبَ وَٱلْأُمِّيِّۦنَ ءَأَسْلَمْتُمْ ۚ فَإِنْ أَسْلَمُوا۟ فَقَدِ ٱهْتَدَوا۟ ۖ وَّإِن تَوَلَّوْا۟ فَإِنَّمَا عَلَيْكَ ٱلْبَلَٰغُ ۗ وَٱللَّهُ بَصِيرٌۢ بِٱلْعِبَادِ
If they argue with you, say, ‘I have submitted my will to Allah, and [so has] he who follows me.’ And say to those who were given the Book and the uninstructed ones, ‘Do you submit?’ If they submit, they will certainly be guided; but if they turn away, then your duty is only to communicate, and Allah watches His servants.
English translation: Ali Quli Qarai
Sources: Ṭabarsī [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan]; Ṭūsī [tusi_al_tibyan]; Baḥrānī, al-Burhān [bahrani_al_burhan]; al-Qummī [qummi]; Ṭabāṭabāʾī, al-Mīzān [tabatabai_al_mizan]; An Enlightening Commentary [enlightening_commentary]. All six present.
The passage warns the disbelievers that wealth and children avail nothing (vv.10–11), invokes the lesson of Badr as a sign (vv.12–13), contrasts the adornments of worldly life with the gardens promised to the God-fearing (vv.14–17), enthrones the great witness-verse to God's oneness "upholding justice" (v.18), and declares that "the religion with God is Islam," the People of the Book having differed only out of envy after knowledge (vv.19–20).
1. Badr is the "sign" (vv.12–13). al-Qummī and al-Burhān transmit the same occasion in near-identical wording — after Badr the Prophet summons the Banū Qaynuqāʿ at Sūq al-Nabaṭ to Islam, they retort "you would meet (real) men," and Gabriel brings down the verse. [qummi] [bahrani_al_burhan] Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī and the Enlightening Commentary give the historical detail (313 Muslims vs. ~1,000) and treat the fulfilled prophecy ("you shall be vanquished") as a proof of prophethood. [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] [tusi_al_tibyan] [enlightening_commentary]
2. The "twice their number" optical sign (v.13). All four exegetical sources agree the host was supernaturally mis-seen, cross-referencing al-Anfāl 44 (God showed each side the other as few/many at the decisive moment). [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] [tusi_al_tibyan] [qummi] [bahrani_al_burhan]
3. The qinṭār and the worldly adornments (v.14). A shared Imāmī gloss — qinṭār = "a bull-hide full of gold" (from al-Bāqir/al-Ṣādiq) — appears in Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, al-Qummī and al-Burhān; al-khayl al-musawwama is "grazing/branded"; all read the list as "the enjoyment of this world" set against the Hereafter. [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] [tusi_al_tibyan] [qummi] [bahrani_al_burhan]
4. The pious and "those who seek forgiveness before dawn" (vv.16–17). al-Burhān's dense cluster (the Prophet's seventy istighfārs in witr; whoever keeps it a year is "of this verse's people") aligns with the same report in Ṭabarsī and the Enlightening Commentary; "purified spouses" = free of menstruation (al-Burhān, al-Qummī, Ṭabarsī). [bahrani_al_burhan] [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] [enlightening_commentary] [qummi]
5. The witness-verse and "Islam = submission" (vv.18–19). All sources read ulū al-ʿilm as bearing witness to tawḥīd "upholding justice," and gloss al-Islām as taslīm (surrender). [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] [tusi_al_tibyan] [tabatabai_al_mizan] [enlightening_commentary] al-Mīzān and Ṭabarsī agree the People of the Book "differed only after knowledge, out of envy." [tabatabai_al_mizan] [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan]
1. The Imāmī taʾwīl layer (vv.18–19). al-Burhān and al-Qummī uniquely identify ulū al-ʿilm with the prophets, legatees and Imams (al-Burhān: "the Imam… the Commander of the Faithful is justice inwardly"), and read "the religion is Islam" as submission to ʿAlī's wilāya, citing the Imam al-Bāqir ("faith exceeds Islam by a degree") and ʿAlī's celebrated sermon defining Islam. [bahrani_al_burhan] [qummi] The Enlightening Commentary notes the same narration-based identification (ulū al-ʿilm = prophets and Imams) while keeping the general sense. [enlightening_commentary] The philological tafsīrs gloss ulū al-ʿilm simply as "the believing scholars." [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] [tusi_al_tibyan]
2. al-Mīzān's systematic doctrine of v.19. Uniquely, al-Mīzān argues that "religion" here = Sharīʿa (not the creational fiṭra) and "signs" = the verses of the revealed Books (not the signs in creation), that the one religion differs across prophets only in degree of perfection, never in contradiction, and that v.20 is a deliberate rebuttal of religious relativism — explicitly against exegetes who read it as endorsing "freedom of belief / no compulsion." [tabatabai_al_mizan] The other sources do not theorise the verse in these terms.
3. Who "made fair" the love of desires (v.14)? Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī canvass three positions — the Devil (al-Ḥasan), or God as a trial (al-Zajjāj), or al-Jubbāʾī's split (God adorns the licit, the Devil the illicit) — left open. [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] [tusi_al_tibyan] al-Burhān instead supplies the al-Ṣādiq ḥadīth that "no pleasure is greater than women," including in Paradise. [bahrani_al_burhan]
4. Direction of the optical sign (v.13). The philologists preserve a real disagreement: did the Muslims see the disbelievers as double (Ibn Masʿūd), or the disbelievers see the Muslims as double (al-Suddī)? — with al-Farrāʾ's minority "three-fold" reading rejected by al-Zajjāj. [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] [tusi_al_tibyan]
5. Unique narrative material. al-Qummī alone appends the long al-Bāqir-vs-Christian-monk debate (the hour neither night nor day; the people of Paradise eat without excreting "like a foetus"; the twins ʿUzayr and ʿUzra). [qummi] Ṭabarsī alone amasses the Prophetic traditions on the merit of knowledge and the virtues of reciting the witness-verse (the 70,000 angels; the 360 idols falling prostrate — the last also in al-Burhān via Saʿīd b. Jubayr). [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] [bahrani_al_burhan]
On the plain sense the six are firmly agreed: Badr is the evidentiary sign of a help that overturns mere numbers; the catalogue of desires (women, sons, gold, horses, cattle, tillage) is "the enjoyment of this world" set against the gardens, pure spouses and divine good-pleasure of the God-fearing; the witness-verse couples God, the angels and the people of knowledge in attesting His justice-upholding unity; and "the religion with God is Islam," i.e. submission. The divergence is, as before, methodological and confessional. The two philological tafsīrs (Ṭūsī, Ṭabarsī) invest in qirāʾāt (yarawnahum/tarawnahum; the inna/anna combinations), the lexicon (daʾb, qinṭār, sahar) and the unresolved optical-sign and "who-adorned-it" disputes. The two narration-collections (al-Qummī, al-Burhān) anchor the passage in the Badr occasion and lay over it a distinctively Imāmī taʾwīl — ulū al-ʿilm are the Imams, and "Islam" is wilāya — capped by ʿAlī's sermon equating Islam, certainty, affirmation and action. al-Mīzān stands apart with its systematic thesis that the verse asserts the unity and graded perfection of the one revealed religion and rebuts relativism, reading "signs" and "religion" in the Sharīʿa-register rather than the creational one. The Enlightening Commentary brokers between them, giving the historical Badr frame, the plain ethical contrast of the two lives, and a graded harmony on ulū al-ʿilm. A specialist should note that al-Burhān's many near-identical istighfār-chains were compressed to representative wording, and that the dense qirāʾāt/grammar of Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī (the inna/anna analysis, the parsing of fiʾa) was rendered for sense rather than verbatim.