Sūrah 70 · Āyāt 19–35

Verses 19-35 — man's anxious nature, and the praying ones who master it. The passage turns from the Fire to its human root: "Man was created halūʿ — agitated when evil touches him, withholding when good touches him" (vv.19-21) — "except the praying ones" (v.22), who are then described by a chain of some ten traits: constant upon their prayer; a known right in their wealth for the petitioner and the deprived; affirming the Day of Recompense; in dread of their Lord's punishment; guarding their chastity save with spouses; keeping trusts and covenants; standing by their testimonies; guarding their prayer — "those will be in gardens, honoured" (v.35).

The reading of halaʿ is where al-Mīzān is most distinctive. Al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī insists the trait is no vice in itself but a God-given faculty of intense craving for the good — the very engine of human felicity — which becomes blameworthy only through misuse; he traces its passage from the child's unmeasured grasping to the mature soul's fear of sin and racing toward forgiveness, and rejects al-Zamakhsharī's reading of it as mere metaphor, since "He perfected everything He created" (32:7) locates the blame in man, not in the making. Al-Ṭabarsī, al-Ṭūsī and al-Qummī render it more lexically — fretful, niggardly, agitated — al-Qummī glossing the "evil" as poverty and the "good" as wealth.

On the prayer that heads the list, al-Mīzān notes its precedence marks it the best of deeds and the antidote to halaʿ (29:45). A tradition shared by al-Qummī, al-Ṭabarsī, al-Burhān and al-Kāfī (from al-Bāqir) distinguishes "constant upon their prayer" (v.23) as the supererogatory from "guarding their prayer" (v.34) as the obligatory — al-Burhān adding the Imāmī gloss that "those are the people of the fifty (prayers) from our Shīʿa," and ʿAlī's ruling that one begins with the obligatory and makes up the missed nāfila later.

The "known right" of v.24 draws the passage's heaviest convergence. The Enlightening Commentary, leaning on the sūra's Meccan dating (zakāt was not yet apportioned), and al-Mīzān, al-Ṭabarsī and an extended al-Burhān dossier all carry the tradition from al-Ṣādiq and Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn that the "known right" is other than zakāt — a free, self-imposed gift to join kin and relieve hardship — al-Mīzān grounding it in zakāt's distinct categories (9:60). Al-Burhān preserves alongside this a starkly esoteric taʾwīl, that "the petitioner" is the Prophet asking God for the House's right and "the deprived" the Imāms barred from the khums — given here strictly as transmitted. The remaining traits gather their own notes: "affirming the Day of Recompense" as practical conviction (al-Mīzān) or "the rising of the Qāʾim" (al-Burhān from al-Bāqir); the ishfāq/dread that, al-Mīzān argues, rightly coexists even with God's decisive promise and even with the angels' sinlessness; the chastity that the Enlightening Commentary and al-Burhān read as embracing temporary marriage (mutʿa); and the amāna that al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī take as deposits and faith (with 33:72), while the Enlightening Commentary lifts it, via al-Bāqir and al-Ṣādiq on 4:58, to the trust of rightful leadership. All converge on the close: such are God's honoured guests "in gardens."