Synthesis: Sūrat Sabaʾ 22–30

Triangulated from Ṭabarsī, Majmaʿ al-Bayān [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan]; al-Qummī [qummi]; al-Ṭūsī, al-Tibyān [tusi_al_tibyan]; al-Baḥrānī, al-Burhān [bahrani_al_burhan]; and al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī, al-Mīzān [tabatabai_al_mizan].

What the passage says. Five times the Prophet is commanded Qul ("Say") to dismantle the false "partners." They own not mithqāla dharra — an atom's weight — in the heavens or the earth, have no shirk (share) in them, and God has no ẓahīr (backer) from among them (v.22). Intercession (shafāʿa) avails only by His leave; the angels stay in terror until it is lifted (fuzziʿa ʿan qulūbihim), then ask "What did your Lord say?" — "The truth" (v.23). "Who provides for you? — God" (v.24); each party answers only for its own deeds (v.25); the Lord will gather and judge — al-fattāḥ al-ʿalīm (v.26); the "partners" cannot even be shown (v.27). The mission is kāffatan li-l-nās — to all mankind (v.28); to the deniers' "when is this promise?" the answer is an appointed Day, neither deferred nor advanced (vv.29–30).

v.22 — the three-fold refutation. Al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī [tabatabai_al_mizan] reads the verse as a single tightly-built argument: a god worth calling on must own something one needs; their non-response proves they own nothing — neither absolutely, nor in part (min shirk), nor as a ẓahīr who could back God in the ordering. Ṭabarsī [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] and Ṭūsī [tusi_al_tibyan] gloss ẓahīr identically as muʿīn (helper), Ṭūsī adding a definition of mulk (ownership) as unimpeded power of disposal, which in truth belongs absolutely to God alone.

v.23 — shafāʿa and the angels' terror. Here the sources both converge and divide. On illā li-man adhina lahu, al-Mīzān [tabatabai_al_mizan] explicitly adopts Zamakhsharī's Kashshāf reading — the lām is causal, so the leave is for the interceded-for (parallel to 21:28 illā li-man irtaḍā, not 10:3 illā min baʿdi idhnihi) — arguing the angels are intermediaries who never act independently. Ṭabarsī [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] records both possibilities (intercessor or interceded-for). The Shīʿī taʾwīl is carried as-attributed by al-Qummī [qummi] and al-Ṭūsī [tusi_al_tibyan]: Ṭūsī lists the licensed intercessors as "the angels, the prophets, the Imāms, and the believers"; Qummī, on the Imām's authority, holds that the Prophet alone has prior leave, then "the Imāms from his progeny, then the prophets," and preserves the vivid Abū Ayman narration in which al-Bāqir warns that all creation will need Muḥammad's intercession ("we have the intercession for our Shīʿa; our Shīʿa for their households"). On fuzziʿa ʿan qulūbihim, all four discursive sources agree the verb means the terror is removed; Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī marshal the lexicographers (Abū ʿUbayda, al-Ḥasan, Qatāda) and debate whether the pronoun refers to the polytheists or the angels, laying out the three angel-scenarios. Al-Mīzān judges these reports mere maṣādīq (instances) unfit as interpretation; he and Qummī both transmit the Abū l-Jārūd report tying the verse to the fatra between Jesus and Muḥammad, when the heavens, long silent, swooned at the Qurʾān's descent "like iron upon rock."

vv.24–27 — provision, responsibility, judgment. All sources read v.24 as an argument from rizq: none would claim idols send rain, so the answer qul Allāh is supplied. The diplomatic wa-innā aw iyyākum… is, for Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, and al-Mīzān alike, "fairness in disputation, not doubt" — Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī both cite Abū l-Aswad al-Duʾalī's verse on loving the Ahl al-Bayt as the parallel idiom (Ṭūsī's recension adds the al-Waṣī line). Al-Mīzān notes the ʿalā/fī contrast — the guided "elevated on a beacon," the lost "immersed in darkness." On al-fattāḥ (v.26), al-Mīzān derives it from fatḥ = creating a separation for a benefit (citing 21:30, the splitting of the closed heavens-and-earth); Qummī glosses tersely "the Judge, the Knowing," and the Enlightening Commentary relays al-Rāghib's Mufradāt (removing complexity, material or immaterial) — a gloss al-Mīzān independently echoes. Al-Mīzān also notes the adab: their deed is called ijrām (crime), the opponents' merely taʿmalūn.

v.28 — kāffatan and universality. The grammatical crux is fully aired. Al-Mīzān [tabatabai_al_mizan] favors al-Rāghib's reading (kāffa from kaff/palm → "restrainer," the hāʾ for hyperbole like rāwiya), supported by the bashīran wa-nadhīran ḥāls, and closes by noting the syntactic dispute: the rival "all/jamīʿan" reading needs kāffa as a ḥāl fronted before its genitive al-nās — "which the Baṣrans forbid and the Kūfans permit." Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī give both the "all mankind" and "restrainer" senses, both citing the "five things" ḥadīth (sent to red and black; aided by terror; spoils; the earth a mosque; stored-up intercession). Al-Burhān [bahrani_al_burhan] and Qummī [qummi] carry the dramatic Imāmī narration in which Gabriel lifts the earth like a palm so the Prophet addresses every people in their tongue; al-Burhān's second tradition extends kāffatan li-l-nās to the doctrine of the post-Prophetic ḥujja (Imām) as universal proof. Notably, al-Mīzān treats the "five things" claim of exclusivity as contradicted by mustafīḍ reports that Noah, Abraham, and the ūlū l-ʿazm were likewise sent universally, and that intercession is shared among the prophets (43:86; 4:159).

vv.29–30 — the appointed Day. The deniers' "when?" is, per al-Mīzān, a question about the jamʿ wa-fatḥ of v.26 — hence the Day is the Resurrection, not (against one view) the day of death. All sources read the answer as a fixed mīʿād that can be neither delayed nor hastened.

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