Synthesis: Sūrat ʿAbasa 17–23 (Six-Source Tafsīr Triangulation)

Sources present: al-Ṭabarsī, Majmaʿ al-Bayān [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan]; al-Ṭūsī, al-Tibyān [tusi_al_tibyan]; al-Qummī, Tafsīr al-Qummī [qummi]; al-Baḥrānī, al-Burhān [bahrani_al_burhan]; al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī, al-Mīzān [tabatabai_al_mizan]; An Enlightening Commentary [enlightening_commentary]. All six comment on this passage.

Human-review flags. [bahrani_al_burhan] (0.86) and [tabatabai_al_mizan] (0.85) are flagged: al-Burhān carries an Imāmī rajʿa taʾwīl reported, not endorsed; al-Mīzān here is my translation of the Arabic, not the published Tawus Raja English.

What the passage says

A curse-formula on ungrateful man (qutila al-insān mā akfarah, v. 17), then a chain of seven divine acts that should shame his pride: created "from a drop" and proportioned (vv. 18–19), the way made easy (v. 20), made to die and given a grave (v. 21), to be resurrected at God's will (v. 22) — and the verdict that man "has not yet carried out what He commanded him" (v. 23).

Convergence

1. Qutila al-insān as curse on the ingrate. [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan], [tusi_al_tibyan] and [tabatabai_al_mizan] agree the phrase is an imprecation ("may man be cursed/perish") on the disbeliever, [tabatabai_al_mizan] defining the kufr as "the absolute covering of the truth" rooted in following caprice and forgetting God's lordship, [enlightening_commentary] adding that it "express[es] an intensive hatred toward the ungrateful ones." 2. The drop and the proportioning. All four sense-commentaries read min nuṭfa as belittling man's lowly origin to break his pride; [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] details the embryonic stages (drop, then clot), [tabatabai_al_mizan] stressing the "contemptible, lowly drop," and [enlightening_commentary] glossing qaddarahu as "measuring and well-balancing." 3. The two readings of "the way made easy" (v. 20). [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] and [tusi_al_tibyan] both preserve the same pair — the physical (the eased exit from the womb, per Ibn ʿAbbās/Qatāda) and the moral (the way of religion, good and evil made plain, per Mujāhid) — anchoring the latter in Q 76:3 / Q 90:10. 4. Death-and-grave as blessing, resurrection as God's secret. [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] and [tusi_al_tibyan] note God dignifies man with burial rather than casting him to beasts; [enlightening_commentary] develops this into death itself "counted among the blessings of Allah." On v. 22 [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan], [tusi_al_tibyan] and [tabatabai_al_mizan] read inshār as reviving "like spreading a folded garment," [tabatabai_al_mizan] noting its suddenness is known to God alone.

The decisive divergence: a free-will argument vs. a rajʿa taʾwīl

On v. 20 the sources split methodologically. [tabatabai_al_mizan] turns "then He made the way easy" into a refutation of determinism (jabr): createdness and the divine decree "do not negate man's being a free agent ... answerable for his act" — the same point [enlightening_commentary] makes plainly ("It does not say: 'Then He forced him' ... an emphasis on man's free-will"). Against this rationalist reading stands the narration-based [bahrani_al_burhan], which (with [qummi]) refers the entire passage to Amīr al-Muʾminīn ʿAlī: created "from the clay of the prophets," dying "the death of the prophets," and "resurrected" = his Return (al-rajʿa) to "carry out what he was commanded" — reading kallā lammā yaqḍi mā amarah (v. 23) as ʿAlī's unfinished command, fulfilled in the Return.

Friction

The two Imāmī registers do not contradict so much as operate on different planes: [tabatabai_al_mizan] reads vv. 17–23 as a universal anthropology of the ingrate, while [bahrani_al_burhan]/[qummi] read them as a coded ʿAlid prophecy. On v. 23's scope, [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] and [tusi_al_tibyan] cite Mujāhid that "no one ever discharges all that God made obligatory" (universal), whereas [tabatabai_al_mizan] restricts the pronoun to the ingrate man of v. 17 — an exegetical, not doctrinal, disagreement.