وَإِذْ أَخَذَ رَبُّكَ مِنۢ بَنِىٓ ءَادَمَ مِن ظُهُورِهِمْ ذُرِّيَّتَهُمْ وَأَشْهَدَهُمْ عَلَىٰٓ أَنفُسِهِمْ أَلَسْتُ بِرَبِّكُمْ ۖ قَالُوا۟ بَلَىٰ ۛ شَهِدْنَآ ۛ أَن تَقُولُوا۟ يَوْمَ ٱلْقِيَٰمَةِ إِنَّا كُنَّا عَنْ هَٰذَا غَٰفِلِينَ
When your Lord took from the Children of Adam, from their loins, their descendants and made them bear witness over themselves, [He said to them,] ‘Am I not your Lord?’ They said, ‘Yes indeed! We bear witness.’ [This,] lest you should say on the Day of Resurrection, ‘Indeed we were unaware of this,’
أَوْ تَقُولُوٓا۟ إِنَّمَآ أَشْرَكَ ءَابَآؤُنَا مِن قَبْلُ وَكُنَّا ذُرِّيَّةًۭ مِّنۢ بَعْدِهِمْ ۖ أَفَتُهْلِكُنَا بِمَا فَعَلَ ٱلْمُبْطِلُونَ
or lest you should say, ‘Our fathers ascribed partners [to Allah] before [us] and we were descendants after them. Will You then destroy us because of what the falsifiers have done?’
وَكَذَٰلِكَ نُفَصِّلُ ٱلْءَايَٰتِ وَلَعَلَّهُمْ يَرْجِعُونَ
Thus do We elaborate the signs, so that they may come back.
وَٱتْلُ عَلَيْهِمْ نَبَأَ ٱلَّذِىٓ ءَاتَيْنَٰهُ ءَايَٰتِنَا فَٱنسَلَخَ مِنْهَا فَأَتْبَعَهُ ٱلشَّيْطَٰنُ فَكَانَ مِنَ ٱلْغَاوِينَ
Relate to them an account of him to whom We gave Our signs, but he cast them off. Thereupon Satan pursued him, and he became one of the perverse.
وَلَوْ شِئْنَا لَرَفَعْنَٰهُ بِهَا وَلَٰكِنَّهُۥٓ أَخْلَدَ إِلَى ٱلْأَرْضِ وَٱتَّبَعَ هَوَىٰهُ ۚ فَمَثَلُهُۥ كَمَثَلِ ٱلْكَلْبِ إِن تَحْمِلْ عَلَيْهِ يَلْهَثْ أَوْ تَتْرُكْهُ يَلْهَث ۚ ذَّٰلِكَ مَثَلُ ٱلْقَوْمِ ٱلَّذِينَ كَذَّبُوا۟ بِـَٔايَٰتِنَا ۚ فَٱقْصُصِ ٱلْقَصَصَ لَعَلَّهُمْ يَتَفَكَّرُونَ
Had We wished, We would have surely raised him by their means, but he clung to the earth and followed his [base] desires. So his parable is that of a dog: if you make for it, it lolls out its tongue, and if you let it alone, it lolls out its tongue. Such is the parable of the people who deny Our signs. So recount these narratives, so that they may reflect.
سَآءَ مَثَلًا ٱلْقَوْمُ ٱلَّذِينَ كَذَّبُوا۟ بِـَٔايَٰتِنَا وَأَنفُسَهُمْ كَانُوا۟ يَظْلِمُونَ
Evil is the parable of the people who deny Our signs and wrong themselves.
مَن يَهْدِ ٱللَّهُ فَهُوَ ٱلْمُهْتَدِى ۖ وَمَن يُضْلِلْ فَأُو۟لَٰٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلْخَٰسِرُونَ
Whomever Allah guides is rightly guided, and whomever He leads astray—it is they who are the losers.
وَلَقَدْ ذَرَأْنَا لِجَهَنَّمَ كَثِيرًۭا مِّنَ ٱلْجِنِّ وَٱلْإِنسِ ۖ لَهُمْ قُلُوبٌۭ لَّا يَفْقَهُونَ بِهَا وَلَهُمْ أَعْيُنٌۭ لَّا يُبْصِرُونَ بِهَا وَلَهُمْ ءَاذَانٌۭ لَّا يَسْمَعُونَ بِهَآ ۚ أُو۟لَٰٓئِكَ كَٱلْأَنْعَٰمِ بَلْ هُمْ أَضَلُّ ۚ أُو۟لَٰٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلْغَٰفِلُونَ
Certainly We have winnowed out for hell many of the jinn and humans: they have hearts with which they do not understand, they have eyes with which they do not see, they have ears with which they do not hear. They are like cattle; indeed, they are more astray. It is they who are the heedless.
English translation: Ali Quli Qarai
This passage holds the doctrinal climax of the second half: "And when your Lord took, from the children of Adam, from their loins, their progeny, and made them witness over themselves: Am I not your Lord? — They said: Yes" (172). al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī lay out three readings of this covenant and, strikingly, both reject the crudely literal one — that God drew atoms from Adam's back — "as against the plain wording" and because rational beings could not all forget such a thing "without forcing the doctrine of transmigration." They favour either the fiṭra reading (the covenant written into the very make of the intellect, so that creation itself answers "Yes") or a real covenant taken from a particular remembering group — and al-Ṭūsī notes pointedly that "in our narrations" the latter is allowed, of "a people who today remember it and are not heedless."
Those narrations are al-Burhān's and al-Qummī's great theme. For them the covenant is threefold — rubūbiyya, nubuwwa, and walāya: "Am I not your Lord, and is not this Muḥammad My messenger, and this ʿAlī the Commander of the Faithful?" The Prophet is "the first to say Yes," and by that precedence "the lord of the first and the last"; ʿAlī is named Amīr al-Muʾminīn at the covenant itself; and on the ūlū al-ʿazm God adds "the Mahdī, by whom I shall give victory to My religion." The fiṭra on which "every child is born" is identified as "Islam," the innate knowing by which "none would otherwise know his Lord" — and al-Bāqir's clay-narration sorts humankind, even as atoms, into the people of the right and the people of the left. al-Burhān even threads the Black Stone into the covenant, as the witness "with two eyes, two lips and a tongue" that testifies for whoever keeps faith.
Against this fidelity stands its opposite: the man "to whom We gave Our signs, but he stripped himself of them" (175). All four sources name him Balʿam b. Bāʿūrā, who held "the Greatest Name" and was answered when he prayed — until, al-Burhān and al-Qummī relate on al-Riḍā's authority, he "inclined to Pharaoh," beat to death the she-ass that spoke to forbid him cursing Mūsā, and had the Name "stripped from his tongue" (so that, of all beasts, only "the she-ass of Balʿam, the dog of the People of the Cave, and the wolf" enter the Garden). al-Ṭabarsī and al-Burhān both preserve al-Bāqir's turn of the verse from a single villain to a standing type: "the origin is Balʿam, then God made it a parable for everyone of the people of the qibla who prefers his desire over God's guidance" — the scholar reduced, by "clinging to the earth," to the dog that "lolls its tongue whether you drive it off or leave it." The unit ends on the abyss this opens (179): those "created for Hell" with "hearts that do not understand, eyes that do not see, ears that do not hear" — whom al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī are careful to read not as a divine purpose but as a known outcome of choice ("I created jinn and men only that they should worship Me," 51:56) — "like cattle, nay more astray," for they alone were given the instrument of knowing, and wasted it.