فَأَمَّا الْإِنسَانُ إِذَا مَا ابْتَلَاهُ رَبُّهُ فَأَكْرَمَهُ وَنَعَّمَهُ فَيَقُولُ رَبِّي أَكْرَمَنِ
As for man, whenever his Lord tests him, and grants him honour, and blesses him, he says, ‘My Lord has honoured me.’
وَأَمَّا إِذَا مَا ابْتَلَاهُ فَقَدَرَ عَلَيْهِ رِزْقَهُ فَيَقُولُ رَبِّي أَهَانَنِ
But when He tests him and tightens for him his provision, he says, ‘My Lord has humiliated me.’
كَلَّا ۖ بَل لَّا تُكْرِمُونَ الْيَتِيمَ
No indeed! No, you do not honour the orphan,
وَلَا تَحَاضُّونَ عَلَىٰ طَعَامِ الْمِسْكِينِ
and do not urge the feeding of the needy.
وَتَأْكُلُونَ التُّرَاثَ أَكْلًا لَّمًّا
You eat the inheritance rapaciously,
وَتُحِبُّونَ الْمَالَ حُبًّا جَمًّا
and love wealth with much fondness.
English translation: Ali Quli Qarai
The passage pivots from nations to the individual, who misreads both ease and hardship: "when his Lord tries him and honours him, he says, 'My Lord has honoured me'; but when He tries him and straitens his provision, he says, 'My Lord has humiliated me.'" The divine "Nay!" corrects him, then indicts a concrete cruelty — not honouring the orphan, not urging the feeding of the poor, devouring inheritance greedily, loving wealth immoderately.
The misdiagnosis. All five present sources fix on one word: ibtilāʾ, trial. Al-Mīzān makes it the structural key — both the giving and the withholding are tests (citing 21:35, "We try you with evil and good") — and man's error is to treat worldly enjoyment as the goal and as honour itself, when honour lies only in nearness to God by faith and works. Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī say the same in plainer terms: God does not enrich a man for his worth nor impoverish him for his lowness; "true honour is by obedience, humiliation by disobedience." Ṭūsī adds the moral psychology — trial "brings out the good or evil in the servant": act by the call of intellect and good appears; by the call of nature, evil.
The indictment. On "you do not honour the orphan," the sources read "honour" pointedly as withholding the orphan's inheritance. Ṭabarsī notes the pre-Islamic custom of denying women and children any share, and cites the Prophet's "I and the guardian of the orphan are like these two in Paradise." "You do not urge the feeding of the needy" is read as failing even to encourage charity, its root being the "abundant love" of wealth named in the final verse. al-Mīzān binds the four charges into one diagnosis — an enjoyment "that never coexists with honour" — and notes the shift from third-person report to second-person address as a deliberate sharpening of the reproof.
The Imāmī reading. Qummi alone adds a taʾwīl: the wronged "orphans and poor" are "those who usurped the right of the Family of Muhammad and devoured the properties of the orphans" — recorded as an attributed report layered over, not replacing, the plain ethical sense. (The narration source al-Burhān is silent for this passage; no Imāmī ḥadīth on the trial-verses was retrieved, so it is marked silent rather than supplied.)
Synthesis. The convergence is striking: every present source refuses the prosperity-logic the verses quote. Wealth granted or withheld is neither reward nor punishment but examination, and the proof of how one fares is exactly how one treats the orphan and the poor. al-Mīzān's formulation captures the shared reading: man "sees his felicity in the enjoyment of the world," when in truth "every having and lacking is but trial and test".