Sūrah 92 · Āyāt 12–16

The passage (92:12–16). A pivot from the two destinies to their ground in God: "Indeed guidance rests with Us, and to Us belong the Hereafter and the former [world]" (12–13), followed by the warning: "So I warn you of a blazing fire (nāran talaẓẓā); none shall suffer it but the most wretched (al-ashqā), who gave the lie and turned away" (14–16).

"Guidance rests with Us." Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī and Qummī converge: what is incumbent upon God is the clarification of the way ("it is upon Us to make it clear to them," in Qummī's terse phrase; "the clarification of obedience from disobedience," per Qatāda in both Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī) — while being guided is left to the human. Ṭūsī and Ṭabarsī both draw the theological corollary that God's self-imposed duty to guide entails that He does not lead people astray from religion. Al-Mīzān gives the passage its deepest treatment, distinguishing two senses of guidance: showing the road (which God owes to all, "whether they tread it or leave it" [16:9], and which prophets share by His leave) and bringing to the goal (the goodly life here and the everlasting life hereafter), which is of the order of creation and belongs to God alone. On "to Us belong the Hereafter and the former," Ṭūsī stresses God's exclusive ownership and command of both worlds, and al-Mīzān universalizes it: He owns everything from every aspect, "no rival opposes Him, no preventer prevents Him."

The warning and "the most wretched." Ṭabarsī notes the rhetorical shift — God "struck fear into the one who deviates from guidance" — and reads al-ashqā as the one who disbelieves in God, "who gave the lie to God's signs and turned from faith." Al-Mīzān explains the grammatical iltifāt in "so I warn you" (from "We" to "I"): if guidance is a decreed certainty, the real Warner is God, though by His Messenger's tongue; and al-ashqā means the disbeliever absolutely — more wretched than any worldly sufferer because his wretchedness is everlasting — not "the most wretched of all people," which the context will not bear.

The fire and the sinful believer. Both Ṭūsī and al-Mīzān confront a theological worry: does "none shall suffer it but the most wretched" exempt sinful believers from the Fire (the Khārijite/Murjiʾite reading)? Ṭūsī answers that the verse describes a specific level of Hell reserved for the denier, with the restriction otherwise qualified by other verses. Al-Mīzān answers that ṣaly (suffering the Fire) here carries the sense of perpetuity: the verse negates of non-disbelievers only the eternal abiding, not the original entry. (Ṭabarsī carries the same al-Qāḍī argument into the next passage.)

The Imāmī layer. Qummī and Baḥrānī apply al-ashqā concretely: "this one who was miserly toward the Messenger of God," and in al-Bāqir's/al-Ṣādiq's narration the one who gave the lie to the Messenger "regarding ʿAlī" and turned from his walāya — for whom there is a particular valley of fire, "the fires being one below another… for the [hostile] deniers (al-nuṣṣāb)." Baḥrānī also preserves al-Riḍā's narration on v. 12 ("God guides whom He wills and leads astray whom He wills"), against those who make maʿrifa a purely acquired thing. These sect-specific identifications are reported as the sources give them, not endorsed.