وَوَصَّيْنَا ٱلْإِنسَٰنَ بِوَٰلِدَيْهِ إِحْسَٰنًا ۖ حَمَلَتْهُ أُمُّهُۥ كُرْهًۭا وَوَضَعَتْهُ كُرْهًۭا ۖ وَحَمْلُهُۥ وَفِصَٰلُهُۥ ثَلَٰثُونَ شَهْرًا ۚ حَتَّىٰٓ إِذَا بَلَغَ أَشُدَّهُۥ وَبَلَغَ أَرْبَعِينَ سَنَةًۭ قَالَ رَبِّ أَوْزِعْنِىٓ أَنْ أَشْكُرَ نِعْمَتَكَ ٱلَّتِىٓ أَنْعَمْتَ عَلَىَّ وَعَلَىٰ وَٰلِدَىَّ وَأَنْ أَعْمَلَ صَٰلِحًۭا تَرْضَىٰهُ وَأَصْلِحْ لِى فِى ذُرِّيَّتِىٓ ۖ إِنِّى تُبْتُ إِلَيْكَ وَإِنِّى مِنَ ٱلْمُسْلِمِينَ
We have enjoined man to be kind to his parents. His mother has carried him in travail, and bore him in travail, and his gestation and weaning take thirty months. When he comes of age and reaches forty years, he says, ‘My Lord! Inspire me to give thanks for Your blessing with which You have blessed me and my parents, and that I may do righteous deeds which please You, and invest my descendants with righteousness. Indeed I have turned to you in penitence, and I am one of the Muslims.’
أُو۟لَٰٓئِكَ ٱلَّذِينَ نَتَقَبَّلُ عَنْهُمْ أَحْسَنَ مَا عَمِلُوا۟ وَنَتَجَاوَزُ عَن سَيِّـَٔاتِهِمْ فِىٓ أَصْحَٰبِ ٱلْجَنَّةِ ۖ وَعْدَ ٱلصِّدْقِ ٱلَّذِى كَانُوا۟ يُوعَدُونَ
Such are the ones from whom We accept the best of what they do, and overlook their misdeeds, [who will be] among the inhabitants of paradise—a true promise which they had been given.
وَٱلَّذِى قَالَ لِوَٰلِدَيْهِ أُفٍّۢ لَّكُمَآ أَتَعِدَانِنِىٓ أَنْ أُخْرَجَ وَقَدْ خَلَتِ ٱلْقُرُونُ مِن قَبْلِى وَهُمَا يَسْتَغِيثَانِ ٱللَّهَ وَيْلَكَ ءَامِنْ إِنَّ وَعْدَ ٱللَّهِ حَقٌّۭ فَيَقُولُ مَا هَٰذَآ إِلَّآ أَسَٰطِيرُ ٱلْأَوَّلِينَ
As for him who says to his parents, ‘Fie on you! Do you promise me that I shall be raised [from the dead] when generations have passed away before me?’ And they invoke Allah’s help [and say]: ‘Woe to you! Believe! Indeed Allah’s promise is true.’ But he says, ‘These are nothing but myths of the ancients.’
أُو۟لَٰٓئِكَ ٱلَّذِينَ حَقَّ عَلَيْهِمُ ٱلْقَوْلُ فِىٓ أُمَمٍۢ قَدْ خَلَتْ مِن قَبْلِهِم مِّنَ ٱلْجِنِّ وَٱلْإِنسِ ۖ إِنَّهُمْ كَانُوا۟ خَٰسِرِينَ
Such are the ones against whom the word has become due, along with the nations of jinn and humans that have passed away before them. They were the losers.
وَلِكُلٍّۢ دَرَجَٰتٌۭ مِّمَّا عَمِلُوا۟ ۖ وَلِيُوَفِّيَهُمْ أَعْمَٰلَهُمْ وَهُمْ لَا يُظْلَمُونَ
For everyone there are degrees [of merit] pertaining to what he has done: He will recompense them fully for their works, and they will not be wronged.
وَيَوْمَ يُعْرَضُ ٱلَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا۟ عَلَى ٱلنَّارِ أَذْهَبْتُمْ طَيِّبَٰتِكُمْ فِى حَيَاتِكُمُ ٱلدُّنْيَا وَٱسْتَمْتَعْتُم بِهَا فَٱلْيَوْمَ تُجْزَوْنَ عَذَابَ ٱلْهُونِ بِمَا كُنتُمْ تَسْتَكْبِرُونَ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ بِغَيْرِ ٱلْحَقِّ وَبِمَا كُنتُمْ تَفْسُقُونَ
The day when the faithless are exposed to the Fire, [they will be told,] ‘You have exhausted your good things in the life of the world and enjoyed them. So today you will be requited with a humiliating punishment for your acting arrogantly in the earth unduly, and because you used to transgress.’
English translation: Ali Quli Qarai
The passage sets two human types against each other. Verse 15 enjoins kindness to parents, recalls the mother's hardship in bearing and the thirty months of pregnancy and weaning, and gives the prayer of the man who at forty gives thanks and seeks righteous offspring; verse 16 promises such people acceptance of their best deeds. Verses 17-18 draw the opposite figure — the son who says Fie on you both and mocks the resurrection, against whom the word comes due; verses 19-20 close with graded recompense and the humiliating Fire.
The plain sense. Al-Tabarsi and al-Tusi read verse 15 as the ground of filial duty, itemizing the mother's toil and deriving from thirty months (with 2:233's two years of suckling) the juristic conclusion that the minimum pregnancy is six months — a deduction the wider tradition famously credits to ʿAli. Both survey the views on full strength (thirty-three, puberty, or forty). On verses 17-18 both give the mainstream occasion — ʿAbd al-Rahman b. Abi Bakr before his Islam — while preserving al-Hasan's and Qatada's view that the verse is general to every undutiful denier of the Rising. On verse 20 they, with al-Tabatabai, attach the tradition of the Prophet on the rush mat answering ʿUmar that the believers' good things are deferred — a rebuke of worldly indulgence that al-Tabarsi and al-Bahrani expand into a long portrait of the asceticism of the Prophet and ʿAli.
The Imami reading of verse 15. Al-Qummi and al-Bahrani (the latter with a dense cluster of chains from al-Sadiq and al-Baqir) turn verse 15 into a Karbala prophecy: the enjoined good (iḥsān) is the Prophet, the parents are al-Hasan and al-Husayn, and Fatima's hardship is her foreknowledge of al-Husayn's martyrdom, disclosed by Gabriel thrice until she consents on the promise that the Imamate, walaya and legateeship will reside in his progeny. They read make my offspring righteous for me (aṣliḥ lī fī dhurriyatī) as deliberately restricting the Imamate to particular descendants — 'had he said make my offspring righteous, they would all have been Imams.' They add that al-Husayn was born at six months (like ʿIsa) and nursed from the Prophet's own thumb, and al-Qummi extends the note to the rajʿa (al-Husayn's return and victory). Al-Bahrani also carries the stoning case in which ʿAli saves a woman by this very verse, concluding 'Had it not been for ʿAli, ʿUmar would have perished.' These readings are reported strictly as attributed. The Enlightening Commentary keeps to the ethical plane, marshalling numerous traditions on the immense reward of honouring parents and the ruin of the arrogant denier.