Sūrah 86 · Āyāt 11–17

al-Ṭāriq 86:11–17 — the second oath, the conclusive word, and "they plot, and I plot." A fresh pair of oaths reopens the case for the Return: "by the resurgent heaven (dhāt al-rajʿ) and the furrowed earth (dhāt al-ṣadʿ)." On rajʿ the sources cluster: al-Ṭabarsī, al-Ṭūsī, al-Qummī and al-Burhān all give "possessed of rain" as the dominant gloss — the sky that returns water again and again — while preserving Ibn Zayd's alternative (the sun, moon and stars that "set and then rise") which al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī actually prefers for its sensory plainness ("its motion, by the rising of the stars after their setting"). On ṣadʿ there is no dispute: the earth "splits open with vegetation," cleaving for crops and trees. The Enlightening Commentary draws the link the oaths are for: dead land revived by returning rain is the Qurʾān's standing emblem of resurrection (it cites Qāf 50:11, "We give life therewith to land that is dead: thus will be the Resurrection").

The oath's answer is 86:13–14: "it is indeed a conclusive discourse (qawl faṣl), and not a jest." Two readings stand side by side across the sources. al-Ṭabarsī reports both: that the qawl faṣl is "the Qurʾān, which separates truth from falsehood" — related from al-Ṣādiq (ʿa) — and that it is "the promise of resurrection, decisively settled, with no doubt in it." al-Ṭūsī leans to the latter (the second origination "is a conclusive discourse, distinguishing truth from falsehood, like the decision of judgment"); al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī leans to the former, taking the pronoun to refer to the Qurʾān — "a discourse that separates truth and falsehood, not speech in which there is no earnest" — and notes that faṣl (literally "separation," for fāṣil, "the separator") is an intensive, "like 'Zayd is justice.'" The Enlightening Commentary harmonizes the two, and adds the long Prophetic narration (via ʿAlī, ʿa) that names the Qurʾān itself "the decisive word, not jest … whoever seeks guidance elsewhere, God leads astray."

Finally the threat-and-consolation, 86:15–17: "indeed they are devising a stratagem (kayd), and I [too] am devising a plan; so respite the disbelievers — give them respite a little." All sources gloss the disbelievers' kayd as their scheming to extinguish God's light; God's counter-kayd is named by the same word, al-Ṭūsī explains, "for the symmetry of the speech," and al-Ṭabarsī because "it is hidden from them." al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī specifies the divine kayd as istidrāj — drawing them on by degrees, granting respite, sealing the heedless heart — "a contrivance by which I drive them to the chastisement of the Day." On the command to "respite … a little," al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī read ruwaydā as a short reprieve ("the respite is counted little because what is to come is inevitably near"), and al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī notes the fine grammatical gradation — mahhil (gradual) then amhil … ruwaydā (at once, and brief). al-Qummī and al-Burhān supply the Imāmī horizon through Abū Baṣīr: the kayd was aimed "against the Messenger, ʿAlī and Fāṭima," and the "little respite" runs "until the rising of the Qāʾim (ʿa), who will avenge … upon the tyrants of Quraysh and the Banū Umayya" — recorded here, as throughout, strictly as an attributed narration. The Enlightening Commentary closes the sūra as it reads it: a chapter that "begins with oaths to the sky and stars and ends with threats to the unbelievers who plot against the purpose of God" — whose plots "will be of no avail, and Allah's purpose will prevail."