Sūrah 32 · Āyāt 21–25

al-Sajda 21–25 — The two punishments, the warning of Moses’ Book, and the guiding imams

What the passage says. God swears to make the deniers “taste the nearer punishment short of the greater punishment, so that they may come back” (v. 21), and asks: who is more wrong than one reminded of his Lord’s signs who then disregards them? — “We shall take vengeance upon the guilty” (v. 22). The discourse then turns to Moses: “Certainly We gave Moses the Book — so be not in doubt about the meeting with Him — and made it a guidance for the Children of Israel” (v. 23); “and We appointed from among them imams who guide by Our command, when they had been patient and had conviction in Our signs” (v. 24); “indeed your Lord will judge between them on the Day of Resurrection concerning that about which they used to differ” (v. 25).

How the present sources read it. On v. 21, the sources array the classical opinions on the “nearer punishment”: al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī list worldly calamities (Ubayy, Ibn ʿAbbās, al-Ḥasan), the slaying at Badr (Ibn Masʿūd), the Meccan famine (Muqātil), the legal penalties (ʿIkrima), and the punishment of the grave (Mujāhid), with the greater punishment being hellfire in the Hereafter; al-Mīzān argues from the goal “that they may return” that the nearer punishment must be the admonitory worldly punishment (famine, disease, slaying), not extermination, and that it is called “nearer” (not “smaller”) to suit the context of warning. The Imāmī sources add a distinctive eschatology: al-Ṭabarsī, al-Ṭūsī, al-Baḥrānī and al-Qummī report from al-Bāqir and al-Ṣādiq that the nearer punishment is the Beast (al-Dābba), the Antichrist, drought, or the punishment of the Return (al-rajʿa) “by the sword,” the greater being the rising of the Mahdī/al-Qāʾim — al-Baḥrānī adducing the tradition that every believer has both “a slaying and a death.”

On v. 22, al-Ṭabarsī, al-Ṭūsī and al-Mīzān agree that none is more unjust than one who turns from the signs after being reminded, al-Mīzān reading the verse as the grounds for the threatened vengeance. On v. 23, the four Arabic sources canvass the disputed pronoun in “the meeting with Him”: the Prophet’s meeting Moses on the Night Journey (Ibn ʿAbbās, with the ḥadīth describing Moses and Jesus), meeting him in the Hereafter, Moses’ receiving the Book (al-Zajjāj), or meeting affliction as Moses did (al-Ḥasan); al-Mīzān, finding none of these to fit the context, proposes that the pronoun refers to God and the “meeting” to the resurrection (echoing “the meeting with their Lord” above), so that the verse parallels the Torah’s revelation with the Qurʾān’s — a consolation to the Prophet, since (as al-Ṭabarsī notes in “sequence”) “as We gave you the Qurʾān and they belied you, We gave Moses the Torah and they belied him.”

On v. 24, al-Mīzān explains that God raised guiding imams from the Children of Israel “when they were patient” and already certain of His signs, the Torah being “blessed for its being acted upon, and blessed after.” The Imāmī sources read the verse through the doctrine of the Imamate: al-Baḥrānī and al-Qummī transmit from al-Bāqir/al-Ṣādiq that “the imams in God’s Book are two — an imam of justice and an imam of tyranny” (contrasting this verse with al-Qaṣaṣ 41, “imams calling to the Fire”), that the Prophet’s patience was rewarded with “the imams from his progeny,” and (Jābir al-Juʿfī from al-Bāqir) that the verse “was revealed specifically concerning the children of Fāṭima.” These attributions are recorded faithfully as the sources transmit them. On v. 25, al-Ṭabarsī, al-Ṭūsī and al-Mīzān read “your Lord will decide between them” as the decisive judgment over their religious differences, which al-Mīzān (citing al-Jāthiya 17) traces to mutual transgression after knowledge. The published Enlightening Commentary frames the section around the warning punishments that summon to return, and the parallel between Moses’ scripture and the Qurʾān.