Sūrat al-Inshiqāq 20–25 — The Rebuke of Unbelief and the Unfailing Reward (Six-Source Triangulation)

Sources present (non-silent): [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan], [tusi_al_tibyan], [bahrani_al_burhan], [qummi], [tabatabai_al_mizan], [enlightening_commentary]. All six comment, though [bahrani_al_burhan] and [qummi] are sparse here: al-Burhān offers only the v.20 gloss (shared with the previous passage’s narration), and al-Qummī comments only on vv.23 and 25, being silent on 20–22 and 24.

What the passage says. The sūra turns to rebuke: what ails the deniers that they will not believe, nor prostrate when the Qurʾān is recited (vv.20–21)? Rather, the faithless cry lies, while God knows what they harbor within (vv.22–23). They are given “tidings” of a painful punishment (v.24) — except those who believe and do righteous deeds, whose reward is unfailing (v.25).

The rebuke and the prostration. [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] and [tusi_al_tibyan] read “what is the matter with them” as an interrogative of denial and wonder: there is no bliss for them, and no excuse, given the clear proofs. [tabatabai_al_mizan] adds a syntactic observation: the shift to the third person (“with them”) marks God turning from the deniers to address the Prophet. On “they do not prostrate,” [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] records the marfūʿ report (Abū Hurayra) that the Prophet himself prostrated on reciting this sūra — the basis of the recitation-prostration (sajdat al-tilāwa) that the Enlightening Commentary also notes — while [tusi_al_tibyan] ties the refusal to prostrate to the Qurʾān’s inimitability (iʿjāz).

“What they keep within” (yūʿūn). Three sources converge on the vessel-image. [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan], [tusi_al_tibyan] and [tabatabai_al_mizan] all derive yūʿūn from wiʿāʾ (“container”) and gloss it as what the deniers harbor in their breasts of disbelief; [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] and [tusi_al_tibyan] both cite al-Farrāʾ and the saying of the Commander of the Faithful that “these hearts are vessels, the best being the most retentive.” [qummi] gives the same in miniature: “what their breasts retain.”

The unfailing reward (ghayr mamnūn). On v.25 the sources offer a spectrum that they largely share. [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] and [tusi_al_tibyan] give “undiminished/unbroken” (Ibn ʿAbbās) and “unmarred by reproach (mann),” noting that mann’s root is “severance” (manantu al-ḥabl, “I cut the rope”). [qummi] picks the reproach-sense: “He does not reproach them with it.” [tabatabai_al_mizan] notes both: from minnah (reproach) the reward is “without any expression that would burden or humiliate,” but cross-referencing 95:6 prefers maqṭūʿ (“severed”) — “an unfailing, unceasing reward,” which it judges more fitting. Both [tusi_al_tibyan] and [tabatabai_al_mizan] classify the exception as discontinuous (istithnāʾ munqaṭiʿ), meaning “but/however,” [tusi_al_tibyan] attributing the qāriʾ pause to Ibn Mujāhid and al-Anbārī.

Two distinctive closes. [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] draws a theological inference: the rebuke “why do you not believe / prostrate” proves faith and prostration are the servants’ own acts (free will, not compulsion) and that disbelievers are bound by the secondary precepts of religion — a point [enlightening_commentary] explicitly credits to al-Ṭabarsī by name in its closing “Explanation.” [bahrani_al_burhan] supplies the Imāmī key carried over from v.19: “what is the matter with them that they do not believe” means the hypocrites’ refusal to affirm the excellence of ʿAlī — making the sūra’s final rebuke, on al-Burhān’s reading, of a piece with its narrations on the community’s successive departures “stage upon stage.”