Sūrah 92 · Āyāt 17–21

The passage (92:17–21). The sūra closes on the saved counterpart of "the most wretched": "And the most Godwary (al-atqā) shall be kept away from it — he who gives his wealth, purifying himself (yatazakkā), and who has with him no favour [owed] to anyone to be repaid, except seeking the Face of his Lord, the Most High; and surely he will be pleased" (17–21).

Kept from the Fire by pure giving. Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī read sayujannabuhā as the most Godwary being set "on the side of the Garden, away from the Fire" (Ṭūsī), and both gloss yatazakkā as seeking the purification of the soul, not show or repute. On "no favour to be repaid… except seeking the Face of his Lord," Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī and al-Mīzān agree the giver acts neither to repay a benefit received nor to put anyone in his debt, but solely for God — the "Face" mentioned, Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī note, "to seek the nobility of the term." Al-Mīzān adds the precise grammar (illā as a disjoined exception) and reads the closing "surely he will be pleased" as the most Godwary being pleased with his Lord's abundant requital — the titles "Lord" and "Most High" signalling that the reward is "the most gracious and highest." The Enlightening Commentary, which devotes a whole section to "the moral excellence of spending in the Way of Allah," reaches the same point: the sole motive is the good pleasure of the Lord, the Most High, and the verse's reward is "absolute pleasure… which contains all blessings."

Who is "the most Godwary"? Three readings sit side by side. (1) The asbāb identification — Abū al-Daḥdāḥ — carried by Ṭabarsī ("clusters upon clusters for Abū al-Daḥdāḥ in the Garden"), Qummī, and Baḥrānī. (2) The Sunni reading, preserved (and contested) within al-Mīzān itself: Ṭabataba'i quotes al-Rāzī's Tafsīr al-Kabīr — "the commentators among us are agreed that al-atqā means Abū Bakr" — and reports that the Shia as a whole reject this, holding it revealed regarding ʿAlī, citing "and they give the zakāt while bowing" [5:55]. (3) The Imāmī taʾwīl: Baḥrānī's narration applies al-atqā to "the Messenger of God and whoever follows him," "who gives his wealth" to the Commander of the Faithful (again via the zakāt-while-bowing verse), and "no favour to be repaid" to the Prophet "whose favour flows over all creation"; Qummī likewise refers "he will be pleased" to the Commander of the Faithful.

Generality vs. a single referent. Crucially, al-Mīzān resists collapsing the verse onto one man. He argues that al-atqā (like al-ashqā in the previous passage) is general — "who gives his wealth" is a general description — and that the sūra's opening and its general warning ("I warn you all of a fire…") forbid reading it as "the single most Godwary of all people." He even classes the weak narration applying it to ʿAlī as jary wa-taṭbīq (application), "not tafsīr," since it splits the description across the Prophet and ʿAlī. Thus the present sources hold the literal-general sense (Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, al-Mīzān, Enlightening) and the personal applications (Qummī, Baḥrānī, and the Sunni Abū Bakr report) in deliberate tension — recorded, not harmonized, and the sectarian identifications not endorsed here.