وَلَقَدْ آتَيْنَا دَاوُودَ مِنَّا فَضْلًا ۖ يَا جِبَالُ أَوِّبِي مَعَهُ وَالطَّيْرَ ۖ وَأَلَنَّا لَهُ الْحَدِيدَ
Certainly We gave David our grace: ‘O mountains and birds, chime in with him!’ And We made iron soft for him,
أَنِ اعْمَلْ سَابِغَاتٍ وَقَدِّرْ فِي السَّرْدِ ۖ وَاعْمَلُوا صَالِحًا ۖ إِنِّي بِمَا تَعْمَلُونَ بَصِيرٌ
saying, ‘Make easy coats of mail, and keep the measure in arranging [the links], and act righteously. Indeed I watch what you do.’
وَلِسُلَيْمَانَ الرِّيحَ غُدُوُّهَا شَهْرٌ وَرَوَاحُهَا شَهْرٌ ۖ وَأَسَلْنَا لَهُ عَيْنَ الْقِطْرِ ۖ وَمِنَ الْجِنِّ مَن يَعْمَلُ بَيْنَ يَدَيْهِ بِإِذْنِ رَبِّهِ ۖ وَمَن يَزِغْ مِنْهُمْ عَنْ أَمْرِنَا نُذِقْهُ مِنْ عَذَابِ السَّعِيرِ
And for Solomon [We subjected] the wind: its morning course was a month’s journey and its evening course was a month’s journey. We made a fount of [molten] copper flow for him, and [We placed at his service] some of the jinn who would work for him by the permission of his Lord, and if any of them swerved from Our command, We would make him taste the punishment of the Blaze.
يَعْمَلُونَ لَهُ مَا يَشَاءُ مِن مَّحَارِيبَ وَتَمَاثِيلَ وَجِفَانٍ كَالْجَوَابِ وَقُدُورٍ رَّاسِيَاتٍ ۚ اعْمَلُوا آلَ دَاوُودَ شُكْرًا ۚ وَقَلِيلٌ مِّنْ عِبَادِيَ الشَّكُورُ
They built for him as many temples as he wished, and figures, basins like cisterns, and caldrons fixed [in the ground]. ‘O House of David, act thankfully, and few of My servants are grateful.’
فَلَمَّا قَضَيْنَا عَلَيْهِ الْمَوْتَ مَا دَلَّهُمْ عَلَىٰ مَوْتِهِ إِلَّا دَابَّةُ الْأَرْضِ تَأْكُلُ مِنسَأَتَهُ ۖ فَلَمَّا خَرَّ تَبَيَّنَتِ الْجِنُّ أَن لَّوْ كَانُوا يَعْلَمُونَ الْغَيْبَ مَا لَبِثُوا فِي الْعَذَابِ الْمُهِينِ
When We decreed death for him, nothing apprised them of his death except a worm which gnawed away at his staff. And when he fell down, [the humans] realized that had the jinn known the Unseen, they would not have remained in a humiliating torment.
لَقَدْ كَانَ لِسَبَإٍ فِي مَسْكَنِهِمْ آيَةٌ ۖ جَنَّتَانِ عَن يَمِينٍ وَشِمَالٍ ۖ كُلُوا مِن رِّزْقِ رَبِّكُمْ وَاشْكُرُوا لَهُ ۚ بَلْدَةٌ طَيِّبَةٌ وَرَبٌّ غَفُورٌ
There was certainly a sign for Sheba in their habitation: two gardens, to the right and to the left. ‘Eat of the provision of your Lord and give Him thanks: a good land and an all-forgiving Lord!’
فَأَعْرَضُوا فَأَرْسَلْنَا عَلَيْهِمْ سَيْلَ الْعَرِمِ وَبَدَّلْنَاهُم بِجَنَّتَيْهِمْ جَنَّتَيْنِ ذَوَاتَيْ أُكُلٍ خَمْطٍ وَأَثْلٍ وَشَيْءٍ مِّن سِدْرٍ قَلِيلٍ
But they disregarded [the path of Allah], so We unleashed upon them a violent flood and replaced their two gardens with two gardens bearing bitter fruit, tamarisk, and sparse lote trees.
ذَٰلِكَ جَزَيْنَاهُم بِمَا كَفَرُوا ۖ وَهَلْ نُجَازِي إِلَّا الْكَفُورَ
We requited them with that for their ingratitude. Do We not requite ingrates?
وَجَعَلْنَا بَيْنَهُمْ وَبَيْنَ الْقُرَى الَّتِي بَارَكْنَا فِيهَا قُرًى ظَاهِرَةً وَقَدَّرْنَا فِيهَا السَّيْرَ ۖ سِيرُوا فِيهَا لَيَالِيَ وَأَيَّامًا آمِنِينَ
We had placed between them and the towns which We had blessed hamlets prominent [from the main route], and We had ordained the course through them: ‘Travel through them in safety, night and day.’
فَقَالُوا رَبَّنَا بَاعِدْ بَيْنَ أَسْفَارِنَا وَظَلَمُوا أَنفُسَهُمْ فَجَعَلْنَاهُمْ أَحَادِيثَ وَمَزَّقْنَاهُمْ كُلَّ مُمَزَّقٍ ۚ إِنَّ فِي ذَٰلِكَ لَآيَاتٍ لِّكُلِّ صَبَّارٍ شَكُورٍ
But they said, ‘Our Lord! Make the stages between our journeys far apart,’ and they wronged themselves. So We turned them into folktales and caused them to disintegrate totally. There are indeed signs in that for every patient and grateful [servant].
وَلَقَدْ صَدَّقَ عَلَيْهِمْ إِبْلِيسُ ظَنَّهُ فَاتَّبَعُوهُ إِلَّا فَرِيقًا مِّنَ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ
Certainly Iblis had his conjecture come true about them. So they followed him—all except a part of the faithful.
وَمَا كَانَ لَهُ عَلَيْهِم مِّن سُلْطَانٍ إِلَّا لِنَعْلَمَ مَن يُؤْمِنُ بِالْآخِرَةِ مِمَّنْ هُوَ مِنْهَا فِي شَكٍّ ۗ وَرَبُّكَ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَيْءٍ حَفِيظٌ
He had no authority over them, but that We may ascertain those who believe in the Hereafter from those who are in doubt about it, and your Lord is watchful over all things.
English translation: Ali Quli Qarai
Triangulating Ṭabarsī (Majmaʿ al-Bayān) [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan], al-Qummī [qummi], al-Ṭūsī (al-Tibyān) [tusi_al_tibyan], al-Baḥrānī (al-Burhān) [bahrani_al_burhan], and al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī (al-Mīzān) [tabatabai_al_mizan]. All five speak to this passage; none is silent.
What the passage says. Two paired histories illustrate the sūra's theme of gratitude and the Return: the bounties of David and Solomon (vv. 10–14), then the ingratitude and ruin of Sabaʾ (vv. 15–21). David is given softened iron and a mountain-and-bird chorus of praise; Solomon, the wind, a molten-copper fount, and jinn labour, dying upright on a staff that a termite gnaws through. Sabaʾ's two gardens are swept by sayl al-ʿArim and replaced with bitter scrub; they are scattered "into tales," and Iblīs's assumption about humankind comes true.
The grammar and lexicon. Ṭabarsī [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] gives the fullest classical apparatus — a qirāʾa register (Yaʿqūb's wa-l-ṭayru nom. vs. the majority accusative; minsāʾatahu/minsaʾatahu; tabayyanat al-jinn vs. the anomalous tabayyanat al-ins), al-Zajjāj's and Abū ʿAlī's ḥujja, and a lexicon glossing taʾwīb as "return after return" in glorification, sard as the plaiting/rivets of mail, and jawābī as great cisterns. al-Ṭūsī [tusi_al_tibyan] parallels this closely. al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī [tabatabai_al_mizan] anchors awwibī by cross-reference to Q 38:18–19 and explicitly rejects the reading that al-awb means "travel," holding it to be the returning of the voice in tasbīḥ — a point on which all five converge against the minority "the mountains journeyed with him" gloss (which Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī report from al-Jubbāʾī).
Convergences. On the technical vocabulary the sources agree and match the web cross-check: ʿayn al-qiṭr = molten copper (Ibn ʿAbbās, in Ṭūsī and the Qummī-via-Burhān chain), qudūr rāsiyāt = cauldrons too vast to move, dābbat al-arḍ = the araḍa (termite). On Solomon's death, Qummī [qummi], al-Burhān [bahrani_al_burhan] (nos. 8756–8761) and al-Mīzān's baḥth riwāʾī all carry the tradition that he stood dead a full year, leaning on the staff, until the termite felled him — al-Mīzān noting it is reported "in narrations of the Shīʿa and the Sunnis." A shared etiological motif (the jinn "thank the termite," which thereafter keeps water and clay by it) appears in Qummī and several Burhān chains. On Sabaʾ's genealogy, Ṭabarsī and al-Mīzān both cite the Farwa b. Musayk ḥadīth (Saba b. Yashjub b. Yaʿrub b. Qaḥṭān; ten sons, six south, four north) — confirmed against external sources.
Divergences and disputed glosses. The ʿarim of v. 16 is read variously across the sources as the musannāt (embankment/dam), heavy rain, a valley-name, or the burrowing rat (al-juradh, called al-khuld); Qummī and al-Burhān narrate the rat gnawing the Maʾrib dam, while Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī list all options. On v. 14's tabayyanat, the Sunnī-shared sense ("the jinn's [ignorance] became apparent to the humans") stands beside the reading al-Burhān [bahrani_al_burhan] (no. 8762) and Ṭūsī attribute to Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn and al-Ṣādiq — tabayyanat al-ins ("the humans realized") — which Qummī and al-Burhān (no. 8757) report as the very wording "this verse was revealed."
Shīʿī taʾwīl (reported as-attributed). Three readings are distinctive and are given strictly as their sources give them. (1) v. 13's tamāthīl: al-Burhān [bahrani_al_burhan] (no. 8753), Qummī [qummi] and al-Mīzān's al-Kāfī citation report al-Ṣādiq/al-Bāqir denying these were images of men and women — "rather, of trees and the like." (2) v. 18's "blessed towns / visible towns": al-Burhān assembles a dense dossier (nos. 8766–8774 — the Qatāda, Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and Abū Ḥanīfa disputations, and the rescript of the Master of the Age) glossing al-qurā llatī bāraknā fīhā as the Ahl al-Bayt and al-qurā al-ẓāhira as their transmitters/Shīʿī scholars, with al-sayr a metaphor for knowledge; al-Mīzān reports the same but expressly labels it "of the baṭn of the Qurʾān, not of the tafsīr." (3) v. 20's Iblīs: Qummī [qummi] and al-Burhān [bahrani_al_burhan] (nos. 8776–8779) make Iblīs's verified "assumption" the breaking of the Ghadīr Khumm covenant, the believing "party" being the Shīʿa of ʿAlī. al-Mīzān [tabatabai_al_mizan] reads ʿalayhim more generally — "people at large, though the verse applies to [Sabaʾ]" — and stresses that Iblīs holds no compelling sulṭān; following is by the servant's own choice, the distinguishing (li-naʿlama) being the externalization, not the increase, of God's knowledge.
Sources present: tabarsi_majma_al_bayan, qummi, tusi_al_tibyan, bahrani_al_burhan, tabatabai_al_mizan; silent: none.