Synthesis: Sūrat Muhammad 12–19

Triangulating Majmaʿ al-Bayān, al-Tibyān, al-Burhān, Tafsīr al-Qummī, al-Mīzān, and the Enlightening Commentary.

Human-review flags: none of the renderings for this passage fell below the confidence threshold; the walāya glosses (vv. 12, 14) and the four-rivers ḥadīth are given strictly as-attributed.

What the passage says. The two destinies are set side by side: the faithful enter Gardens with flowing streams, while the disbelievers "enjoy and eat like the cattle do," the Fire their abode (v. 12); Mecca, which expelled the Prophet, is warned by the fate of mightier towns (v. 13). Verse 14 asks whether one on "a manifest proof from his Lord" is like one whose evil is made to seem fair, and verse 15 unfolds the famous parable of Paradise — rivers of unstaling water, of milk unchanging in flavour, of delicious wine, and of purified honey, with every fruit and forgiveness — against the boiling water that cuts the bowels of the damned. Verses 16–18 expose the eavesdroppers who leave the Prophet asking "What did he say just now?", their hearts sealed, while the guided grow in guidance; the Hour's portents "have already come." Verse 19 commands the Prophet to "know that there is no god except Allah" and to seek forgiveness for himself and the believers.

How the present sources read it. On the "cattle" simile Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī agree it likens the disbelievers' heedless consumption to beasts, Ṭabarsī citing the ḥadīth that "the believer eats with one gut, the disbeliever with seven" as a figure for worldly greed. On the paradise-rivers all of Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī and al-Mīzān stress that each river is purified of its worldly defect — wine without intoxication or headache, honey without dross — al-Mīzān adding that "the parable (mathal)" may signal that Paradise transcends any description, only approximated to the mind. Qummī and Baḥrānī preserve a striking gloss: the wine is such that "when the friend of God takes it he finds in it the scent of musk," and Baḥrānī records the tradition, from ʿAlī and from the Prophet, that four earthly rivers issue from Paradise — the Euphrates (water), the Nile (honey), the Sayḥān (wine) and the Jayḥān (milk).

On the eavesdroppers (v. 16), Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī and al-Mīzān read "those given knowledge" as the learned believers, and al-Mīzān weighs whether the hypocrites' "What did he say?" is genuine incomprehension, mockery, or belittlement, concluding that following whim is the very mark of the sealed heart. Qummī and Baḥrānī both anchor the verse in al-Bāqir's report that God opens the hearing of the heart for whomever He intends good and seals it for whomever He intends ill, and both cite ʿAlī's testimony (via al-Aṣbagh) that he alone would grasp the revelation while others left asking after it. On the Hour's "portents" (v. 18), Ṭūsī names the splitting of the moon and the Prophet's own advent as the seal of prophets, and Ṭabarsī the Prophetic "I and the Hour were sent like these two [fingers]"; Qummī and Baḥrānī unfurl the long Farewell-Pilgrimage sermon to Salmān enumerating the signs — neglected prayer, the rule of women, open usury, adorned mosques over hateful hearts — until "the earth casts forth its treasures." On v. 19 Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī take the command to seek forgiveness as addressed to the Prophet but intending the community, citing Ḥudhayfa's report of the Prophet's hundredfold daily istighfār, a point al-Mīzān echoes while insisting God would not command the seeking without meeting it with forgiveness. The Enlightening Commentary frames the whole as the contrast of the "manifest proof" of true faith with the self-deceived, and reads the sealed hearts as those abandoned to their desires.