Sūrat al-Insān · Āyāt 23–31

What the passage says

The surah turns from the reward of the pious to address the Prophet directly. "We sent down to you the Qurʾān in a gradual descent" (v.23) — revealed in stages, not all at once, and it carries honour for the one who received it. So bear patiently with your Lord's decree, and obey no sinner or ingrate among them (v.24): hold to the mission and do not bend to those who would pull you off it. Mention your Lord's name morning and evening (v.25), prostrate to Him in part of the night and glorify Him the long night through (v.26) — keep up the remembrance and the prayer that give the strength to persevere.

The passage then names the problem with those who reject him: they love this fleeting life and leave a heavy day behind them (v.27) — absorbed in immediate pleasures, they ignore the Day of Reckoning. We created them and made their frame firm, and whenever We will We can replace them with others like them (v.28) — they cannot frustrate God, who holds their making and their replacing in His hand.

It closes on the theology of guidance and will. This is a reminder; so whoever wishes may take a way to his Lord (v.29) — the door is open, the choice is real. Yet you will not wish unless God wills; God is Knowing, Wise (v.30) — your very willing is not cut off from God's. He admits whom He wills into His mercy, and for the wrongdoers He has prepared a painful punishment (v.31): mercy for those who choose faith, just recompense for those who choose wrong.

Convergence — where the six agree

• All six read v.23 the same way: the Qurʾān's descent "in stages" honours the Prophet and certifies it as wholly from God. Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī add the gloss that it was sent down "in detail, verse after verse" rather than as a single whole; the Enlightening Commentary notes the same emphasis is also an answer to those who accused him of fabrication.
• On v.26's "glorify Him the long night," there is a striking unanimity of narration: Ṭabarsī, al-Qummī, Ṭabāṭabāʾī and the Enlightening Commentary all carry Imām al-Riḍā's gloss that the glorification meant here is the night prayer (ṣalāt al-layl).
• Ṭabāṭabāʾī, al-Qummī and the Enlightening Commentary read the prayer-commands of vv.25–26 as mapping onto the dawn, afternoon, sunset and night prayers as they stood before the five obligatory prayers were instituted — Ṭabāṭabāʾī tying this to the Meccan timing of the verses (cross-referencing [17:78], [11:114], [20:130]).
• On v.28's "We strengthened their make (asrahum)," the lexical readings cluster across Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, al-Qummī and Ṭabāṭabāʾī: the firm-knit creation (Ibn ʿAbbās, Qatāda), the joints (Abū Hurayra, al-Rabīʿ), or strength (Ibn Zayd) — all rooted in asr meaning "binding," as a captive (asīr) is bound.
• On vv.29–30 — the heart of the passage — all six hold the same balance: "whoever wishes takes a way" proves the human capacity to choose precedes the act (Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī explicitly cite it against the Determinists), while "you will not wish unless God wills" denies that the servant is autonomous. The Enlightening Commentary frames this as the classic middle position between fatalism and unchecked free will.

Divergence — where they differ

• Literal sense vs. esoteric taʾwīl. The sharpest split is between al-Baḥrānī and the others. al-Baḥrānī transmits the Imāmī interpretive readings of the closing verses: that "We sent down the Qurʾān" means "by the walāya of ʿAlī," that "this is a reminder" is the walāya, that admission "into His mercy" is admission "into our walāya," and (from Imām al-Bāqir) that the "mercy" of v.31 is ʿAlī himself. Ṭabāṭabāʾī knows these very reports but classes the application of "your Lord's decree" and "His mercy" to the walāya as jary (running-application) or baṭn (inner meaning) — "in no way literal tafsīr." The reports themselves preserve this distinction: in al-Baḥrānī's narration Imām al-Kāẓim, asked whether the walāya reading is the revealed text, answers, "No, this is taʾwīl."
• Who the "sinner or ingrate" is. Ṭabarsī reports the named identifications — the "sinner" as ʿUtba b. Rabīʿa, the "ingrate" as al-Walīd b. al-Mughīra (Muqātil) or Abū Jahl (Qatāda) — but himself prefers the general reading: anyone who summons you to sin or unbelief. Ṭabāṭabāʾī agrees the verse is general and judges the Abū Jahl report "more apt as an application" than as the verse's cause. The Enlightening Commentary keeps both: the three men are the "most vivid evidences," but the wording reaches every sinner and unbeliever.
• A unique structural reading of v.28. Ṭabāṭabāʾī alone reads v.28 as "repelling an objection" — answering the imagined claim that the world-lovers, by clinging to this life, could frustrate God's will that they believe; the reply is that their creation, command, life and death are all in His hand.
• On v.30's exact mechanism. Ṭabarsī relays Abū Muslim's reading that God's willing here would mean compelling the servant (a willing God did not in fact exercise, leaving faith a free choice). Ṭabāṭabāʾī gives the verse its signature "matter between the two matters" formulation: the servant's will depends on God's will, and God's will bears on the act precisely through the servant's will — neither compulsion (jabr) nor delegation (tafwīḍ). The Imāmī narrations in al-Baḥrānī and al-Mīzān sharpen the same point against the Delegators: "our hearts are vessels for God's will; when He wills, we will."

Each scholar's full text is in the source panels below.