Sūrah 90 · Āyāt 17–20

al-Balad 90:17–20 — the deeds avail only with faith, and the parting of the right hand from the left. The closing passage turns the costly deeds of the "ascent" into something that saves only when joined to belief. al-Ṭabarsī (Majmaʿ al-Bayān) states the principle directly: God "made clear that this act of devotion benefits only together with faith," reading thumma kāna mina alladhīna āmanū as "then, along with this, he was among the believers who held firm to their faith." On the twin counsels, al-Ṭabarsī glosses tawāṣaw bi-l-ṣabr as patience "upon God's obligations and patience in refraining from disobedience," and tawāṣaw bi-l-marḥama as "each counselling the other to compassion toward the poor and the destitute." al-Ṭūsī (al-Tibyān) reads the same sequence — one "became one of the believers when he did that and contracted faith, then stood firm" — with mutual counsel "to patience amid hardships, trials and afflictions." Tafsīr al-Qummī compresses both: patience "upon the obligations of God" and mercy "among themselves," adding the decisive rider that "this is accepted only from a believer." al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī (al-Mīzān) notes that marḥama is a verbal noun from raḥma, the counsel of mercy being "toward the people of poverty, want and destitution."

The companions of the right. al-Ṭabarsī reads aṣḥāb al-maymana as those who "take their records in their right hands," or "the people of blessing (yumn) and grace upon themselves"; al-Ṭūsī adds they "are led to the right, toward the Garden." al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī ties the title back to the whole argument: the maymana — "in the sense of blessing, the opposite of ill-omen" — are precisely "those who scaled the ascent and were of those who believed and enjoined patience and mercy," who "see in what they sent ahead nothing but a blessed, beautiful, well-pleasing affair."

The companions of the left, and the closed Fire. For aṣḥāb al-mashʾama, al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī read those "who disbelieved in Our signs" — "in Our proofs, and belied Our prophets" (al-Ṭabarsī), "denying God's favours and belying His prophets" (al-Ṭūsī) — taking their records in their left hands. al-Burhān (al-Baḥrānī) supplies the Imami taʾwīl that frames the sūra's two parties around walāya: the companions of the right are "the companions of the Commander of the Faithful" (ʿAlī, ʿa), and the companions of the left "the enemies of the Family of Muḥammad." On the final threat, the present sources are unanimous in lexicon: nār muʾṣada means muṭbaqa, a Fire "closed in" / "covered over" — al-Ṭabarsī expanding it vividly to gates "shut upon them, no gate opened for them and no anguish issuing from it," an eternal sealing that answers the boaster of verse 7 who thought "none saw him."

The Enlightening Commentary (Imani) stresses that the deeds avail only when joined to "strong sincerity in three dimensions of Belief, morals, and action," and reads thumma ("then") as marking priority of rank — Faith standing "definitely higher than the value of helping the indigent" — rather than mere sequence. It draws out the social force of tawāṣaw: patience and compassion "should not occur in the society only in the form of individual behaviour, but … as a common current in the whole society." On the two parties it notes maymana as the record given in the right hand (or, from another root, "grace"), and mashʾama (from shuʾm, "a tendency to the left") as the ominous party who "cause disaster both for themselves and for others." It closes on muʾṣada (from iṣād, "to close the door and secure it"): Hell with "all the doors closed — what a suffocating condition it will have!"