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Sūrah 16 · Āyāt 2234

The verses

  1. 22

    إِلَـٰهُكُمْ إِلَـٰهٌ وَاحِدٌ ۚ فَالَّذِينَ لَا يُؤْمِنُونَ بِالْآخِرَةِ قُلُوبُهُم مُّنكِرَةٌ وَهُم مُّسْتَكْبِرُونَ

    Your God is the One God. Those who do not believe in the Hereafter, their hearts are in denial [of the truth], and they are arrogant.

  2. 23

    لَا جَرَمَ أَنَّ اللَّهَ يَعْلَمُ مَا يُسِرُّونَ وَمَا يُعْلِنُونَ ۚ إِنَّهُ لَا يُحِبُّ الْمُسْتَكْبِرِينَ

    Undoubtedly, Allah knows whatever they hide and whatever they disclose. Indeed, He does not like the arrogant.

  3. 24

    وَإِذَا قِيلَ لَهُم مَّاذَا أَنزَلَ رَبُّكُمْ ۙ قَالُوا أَسَاطِيرُ الْأَوَّلِينَ

    When they are asked, ‘What is it that your Lord has sent down?’ They say, ‘Myths of the ancients,’

  4. 25

    لِيَحْمِلُوا أَوْزَارَهُمْ كَامِلَةً يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ ۙ وَمِنْ أَوْزَارِ الَّذِينَ يُضِلُّونَهُم بِغَيْرِ عِلْمٍ ۗ أَلَا سَاءَ مَا يَزِرُونَ

    [with the result] that they will bear the full weight of their own burden on the Day of Resurrection, along with part of the burden of those whom they mislead without any knowledge. Behold! Evil is what they bear!

  5. 26

    قَدْ مَكَرَ الَّذِينَ مِن قَبْلِهِمْ فَأَتَى اللَّهُ بُنْيَانَهُم مِّنَ الْقَوَاعِدِ فَخَرَّ عَلَيْهِمُ السَّقْفُ مِن فَوْقِهِمْ وَأَتَاهُمُ الْعَذَابُ مِنْ حَيْثُ لَا يَشْعُرُونَ

    Those who were before them [had also] schemed. Then Allah came at their edifice from the foundations and the roof fell down upon them from above and the punishment overtook them whence they were not aware.

  6. 27

    ثُمَّ يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ يُخْزِيهِمْ وَيَقُولُ أَيْنَ شُرَكَائِيَ الَّذِينَ كُنتُمْ تُشَاقُّونَ فِيهِمْ ۚ قَالَ الَّذِينَ أُوتُوا الْعِلْمَ إِنَّ الْخِزْيَ الْيَوْمَ وَالسُّوءَ عَلَى الْكَافِرِينَ

    Then, on the Day of Resurrection, He will disgrace them, and say, ‘Where are My “partners” for whose sake you used to defy [Allah]?’ Those who were given knowledge will say, ‘Indeed today disgrace and distress pursue the faithless.’

  7. 28

    الَّذِينَ تَتَوَفَّاهُمُ الْمَلَائِكَةُ ظَالِمِي أَنفُسِهِمْ ۖ فَأَلْقَوُا السَّلَمَ مَا كُنَّا نَعْمَلُ مِن سُوءٍ ۚ بَلَىٰ إِنَّ اللَّهَ عَلِيمٌ بِمَا كُنتُمْ تَعْمَلُونَ

    —Those whom the angels take away while they were wronging themselves. Thereat they submit: ‘We were not doing any evil!’ ‘Yes, [the angels say to them,] indeed Allah knows best what you used to do!

  8. 29

    فَادْخُلُوا أَبْوَابَ جَهَنَّمَ خَالِدِينَ فِيهَا ۖ فَلَبِئْسَ مَثْوَى الْمُتَكَبِّرِينَ

    Enter the gates of hell to remain in it [forever]. Evil is the [final] abode of the arrogant.’

  9. 30

    وَقِيلَ لِلَّذِينَ اتَّقَوْا مَاذَا أَنزَلَ رَبُّكُمْ ۚ قَالُوا خَيْرًا ۗ لِّلَّذِينَ أَحْسَنُوا فِي هَـٰذِهِ الدُّنْيَا حَسَنَةٌ ۚ وَلَدَارُ الْآخِرَةِ خَيْرٌ ۚ وَلَنِعْمَ دَارُ الْمُتَّقِينَ

    But those who were Godwary will be asked, ‘What is it that your Lord has sent down?’ They will say, ‘Good.’ For those who do good in this world there will be a good [reward], and the abode of the Hereafter is better, and the abode of the Godwary is surely excellent:

  10. 31

    جَنَّاتُ عَدْنٍ يَدْخُلُونَهَا تَجْرِي مِن تَحْتِهَا الْأَنْهَارُ ۖ لَهُمْ فِيهَا مَا يَشَاءُونَ ۚ كَذَٰلِكَ يَجْزِي اللَّهُ الْمُتَّقِينَ

    the Gardens of Eden, which they will enter, with streams running in them. There they will have whatever they wish, and thus does Allah reward the Godwary

  11. 32

    الَّذِينَ تَتَوَفَّاهُمُ الْمَلَائِكَةُ طَيِّبِينَ ۙ يَقُولُونَ سَلَامٌ عَلَيْكُمُ ادْخُلُوا الْجَنَّةَ بِمَا كُنتُمْ تَعْمَلُونَ

    —those whom the angels take away while they are pure. They say [to them], ‘Peace be to you! Enter paradise because of what you used to do.’

  12. 33

    هَلْ يَنظُرُونَ إِلَّا أَن تَأْتِيَهُمُ الْمَلَائِكَةُ أَوْ يَأْتِيَ أَمْرُ رَبِّكَ ۚ كَذَٰلِكَ فَعَلَ الَّذِينَ مِن قَبْلِهِمْ ۚ وَمَا ظَلَمَهُمُ اللَّهُ وَلَـٰكِن كَانُوا أَنفُسَهُمْ يَظْلِمُونَ

    Do they not consider that the angels may come to them, or your Lord’s edict may come? Those who were before them had acted likewise; Allah did not wrong them, but they used to wrong themselves.

  13. 34

    فَأَصَابَهُمْ سَيِّئَاتُ مَا عَمِلُوا وَحَاقَ بِهِم مَّا كَانُوا بِهِ يَسْتَهْزِئُونَ

    So the evils of what they had earned visited them, and they were besieged by what they used to deride.

English translation: Ali Quli Qarai

✦ Synthesisopus-4.8every claim cited to a source below

Synthesis: Sūrat al-Naḥl 22–34

Triangulating Ṭabarsī (Majmaʿ al-Bayān), al-Qummī, al-Ṭūsī (al-Tibyān), al-Baḥrānī (al-Burhān), and al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī (al-Mīzān); the published Enlightening Commentary runs alongside.

Human-review flags: al-Mīzān [tabatabai_al_mizan] — its single fetched unit covers vv.22–40, so the translation is condensed and restricted to the vv.22–34 portion (bayān through v.34 plus the in-range narrations); the vv.35–40 free-will debate and the kun fa-yakūn discussion are deliberately omitted. Confidence 0.83.

What the passage says. The section pivots from the proof of God's oneness to the moral pathology of those who reject it: deniers of the Hereafter whose "hearts are in denial" and who are "arrogant" (vv.22–23); their dismissal of revelation as "fables of the ancients" (v.24); the burden they carry — their own in full, plus a share of those they mislead (v.25); the historical schemers undone "from the foundations" (v.26); the Resurrection disgrace and the speech of "those given knowledge" (v.27); the contrast of two death-scenes — the wrongdoers seized in denial and sent to Hell's gates (vv.28–29) versus the God-fearing greeted with "Peace be upon you, enter the Garden" (vv.30–32); closing with the warning that the deniers await only the angels or the [divine] command, and reap their own wrongdoing (vv.33–34).

How the present sources read it. All five converge on the core, but split along a linguistic axis (Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, al-Mīzān) and an Imāmī-narrational axis (al-Qummī, al-Baḥrānī). Ṭabarsī [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] and Ṭūsī [tusi_al_tibyan] supply the classical apparatus — the qirāʾāt (Nāfiʿ's tushāqqūn with kasr al-nūn = "you oppose Me," versus the majority fatḥa = "you oppose [the believers]"; Ḥamza's yatawaffāhum with yāʾ), the lexicon (wizr/wazīr, shiqāq), and the parsing of mādhā anzala and the accusative khayran against the nominative asāṭīr. Both, citing al-Zajjāj and Ibn al-Anbārī, prefer reading v.26 as a parable ("God came at their scheme from its root") over the literal collapse-narrative attached by Ibn ʿAbbās to Nimrod (Numrūd b. Kanʿān) or Nebuchadnezzar. Al-Mīzān [tabatabai_al_mizan] deepens this: v.26 is a metonymy for a plot nullified "from where they did not expect," and v.25's shared burden is explained through the longitudinal subsistence of one deed in commander and doer — reconciling li-yaḥmilū … kāmila with lā taziru wāzira [17:15]. It alone parses the mutakabbir/mustakbir nuance and reads the two death-scenes (vv.28, 32) as the explanatory unpacking of "the unbelievers" and "the God-fearing."

The Imāmī line reframes the same verses around walāya. Al-Qummī [qummi] glosses the "arrogance" of v.22 as arrogance toward the wilāya of ʿAlī, the Hereafter as al-rajʿa (the Return), and v.25's burden as that of the usurpers of the Commander of the Believers and all who follow them — anchored in a long sermon on bidʿa. Al-Baḥrānī [bahrani_al_burhan], a narration-collection with full isnāds (reports 6006–6014), corroborates and extends this: the "structure/house" of v.26 is "the house of treachery in which they used to gather" (Muḥammad b. Muslim ← Abū Jaʿfar), and "those given knowledge" (v.27) are the Imāms (ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm) — a reading al-Qummī gives verbatim. Notably, al-Baḥrānī preserves a reading-variant baytahum ("their house") for bunyānahum, transmitted via the obscure-but-genuine narrator Abū al-Safātij.

Agreements and divergences. On ṭayyibīn (v.32) the sources spread out: Ṭūsī reads "righteous through beautiful deeds," al-Mīzān "free of the foulness of wrongdoing" (linking 6:82), while al-Qummī/al-Baḥrānī narrate "those whose births were pure" — a reading al-Mīzān itself flags as obscure and weak. On "the abode of the God-fearing" (v.30), Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī allow either the Hereafter or this world; al-Baḥrānī and al-Mīzān cite ʿAyyāshī ← Abū Jaʿfar that it is al-dunyā. The Enlightening Commentary tracks the linguistic line, adding the Meccan muqtasimūn setting for v.24 and the seven-gates traditions for v.29.

Sources present: tabarsi_majma_al_bayan, qummi, tusi_al_tibyan, bahrani_al_burhan, tabatabai_al_mizan (+ enlightening_commentary); silent: none.

The tafsīr (6 sources)