أَلَمْ تَرَ إِلَى الَّذِينَ بَدَّلُوا نِعْمَتَ اللَّهِ كُفْرًا وَأَحَلُّوا قَوْمَهُمْ دَارَ الْبَوَارِ
Have you not regarded those who have changed Allah’s blessing with ingratitude, and landed their people in the house of ruin?
جَهَنَّمَ يَصْلَوْنَهَا ۖ وَبِئْسَ الْقَرَارُ
—hell, which they shall enter, and it is an evil abode!
وَجَعَلُوا لِلَّهِ أَندَادًا لِّيُضِلُّوا عَن سَبِيلِهِ ۗ قُلْ تَمَتَّعُوا فَإِنَّ مَصِيرَكُمْ إِلَى النَّارِ
They have set up equals to Allah, to lead [people] astray from His way. Say, ‘Enjoy [for a while], for indeed your destination is hellfire!’
قُل لِّعِبَادِيَ الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا يُقِيمُوا الصَّلَاةَ وَيُنفِقُوا مِمَّا رَزَقْنَاهُمْ سِرًّا وَعَلَانِيَةً مِّن قَبْلِ أَن يَأْتِيَ يَوْمٌ لَّا بَيْعٌ فِيهِ وَلَا خِلَالٌ
Tell My servants who have faith to maintain the prayer and to spend out of what We have provided them with, secretly and openly, before there comes a day on which there will be neither any bargaining nor friendship.
اللَّهُ الَّذِي خَلَقَ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضَ وَأَنزَلَ مِنَ السَّمَاءِ مَاءً فَأَخْرَجَ بِهِ مِنَ الثَّمَرَاتِ رِزْقًا لَّكُمْ ۖ وَسَخَّرَ لَكُمُ الْفُلْكَ لِتَجْرِيَ فِي الْبَحْرِ بِأَمْرِهِ ۖ وَسَخَّرَ لَكُمُ الْأَنْهَارَ
It is Allah who created the heavens and the earth, and He sends down water from the sky and with it He brings forth crops for your sustenance. And He disposed the ships for you[r benefit] so that they may sail at sea by His command, and He disposed the rivers for you.
وَسَخَّرَ لَكُمُ الشَّمْسَ وَالْقَمَرَ دَائِبَيْنِ ۖ وَسَخَّرَ لَكُمُ اللَّيْلَ وَالنَّهَارَ
He disposed the sun and the moon for you, constant [in their courses], and He disposed the night and the day,
وَآتَاكُم مِّن كُلِّ مَا سَأَلْتُمُوهُ ۚ وَإِن تَعُدُّوا نِعْمَتَ اللَّهِ لَا تُحْصُوهَا ۗ إِنَّ الْإِنسَانَ لَظَلُومٌ كَفَّارٌ
and He gave you all that you had asked Him. If you enumerate Allah’s blessings, you will not be able to count them. Indeed man is most unfair and ungrateful!
English translation: Ali Quli Qarai
These verses pivot on one contrast: a leadership that exchanges God's favor for ingratitude and ruins its people (vv28–30), against the believing remnant called to prayer and almsgiving (v31), and the sweep of cosmic favors leaving ungrateful man without excuse (vv32–34).
Who "exchanged the favor of Allah for ingratitude" (v28). al-Qummī and al-Ṭūsī tie the verse to al-afjarān — the "two licentious clans" of Quraysh, Banū Umayya and Banū al-Mughīra: the latter cut down at Badr, the former "given enjoyment for a time." al-Ṭūsī preserves the broad chain (ʿAlī, Ibn ʿAbbās, Saʿīd b. Jubayr, Mujāhid, al-Ḍaḥḥāk, Qatāda) reading them as the Quraysh who led their people to disbelief, with philology on al-bawār and the lām al-ʿāqiba in "to mislead." al-Baḥrānī assembles fourteen narrations and widens it decisively: asked whether only the two clans are meant, both al-Bāqir and al-Ṣādiq (ʿalayhimā al-salām) reply, "By Allah, it is Quraysh in its entirety," those who warred on the Prophet and denied his waṣī. Throughout runs the signature reading, voiced by ʿAlī and al-Ṣādiq: "We [the Ahl al-Bayt] are the favor of Allah with which He favored His servants" — so the favor exchanged is, inwardly, walāya itself (so al-Aṣbagh b. Nubāta; and the report where Mūsā al-Kāẓim applies the verse before Hārūn al-Rashīd, who "grew angry"). al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī (al-Mīzān) refuses to narrow it to Badr's slain or any one clan: "caused their people to alight" marks the referents as leaders — every imām of misguidance who strays then leads astray. He treats the Ahl al-Bayt reports as jary wa-taṭbīq (application to the supreme instance), not occasion of revelation.
The rivals and the threat (vv29–30). All agree "Hell — they enter it" substitutes for dār al-bawār. On the andād, al-Mīzān is sharpest: the polytheists set up rivals knowingly, for worldly gain and to "enslave people" — hence "to mislead from His path"; "enjoy yourselves" replaces "take rivals" to expose the aim they concealed. The published Enlightening Commentary frames v28 as a face of the preceding "evil tree," with the same range of referents (Prophet, Ahl al-Bayt, Umayyads) and the favor read inwardly as the Imams.
The believing remnant (v31). al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī explain the jussive yuqīmū (three routes), glossing "secretly and openly" as supererogatory giving hidden (against ostentation), obligatory giving public (against the charge of withholding). al-Mīzān notes the Sūra is Meccan — so this is absolute spending in God's path, zakāt not yet legislated — and harmonizes "no befriending" with al-Zukhruf 43:67 (friends become enemies except the God-fearing): friendship not rooted in taqwā is annulled, that for God's sake endures. al-Baḥrānī adds al-Ṣādiq's narration distinguishing zakāt from other dues — the ḥaqq maʿlūm (70:24–25), the goodly loan, al-māʿūn — grounding "spend secretly and openly" in a wider ethic of giving.
The cosmos as favor, and man's verdict (vv32–34). al-Ṭabarsī, al-Ṭūsī, and al-Mīzān read the creation-catalogue (heavens, rain, fruits, ships, rivers, sun, moon, night, day) as proof that Lordship belongs to God alone, not the rivals; al-Mīzān notes the inverted "ships… upon the sea" (ships the clearest sea-favor) and dāʾibayn as ceaseless constancy. On "He gave you of all you asked" (v34), al-Mīzān's reading is distinctive: suʾāl is creation's real, existential asking, so "min" is ibtidāʾiyya and the address is to the human species, whose every true need God answers (cf. al-Baqara 2:186), even where an individual's goes unmet. al-Baḥrānī crowns the passage with al-Sajjād's (ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn) words — echoed in al-Ṭabarsī and al-Mīzān via Ṭalq b. Ḥabīb — that God made the knowers' very recognition of falling short in thanking Him into thanksgiving: the favors cannot be numbered, so "man is most unjust, most ungrateful (ẓalūm kaffār)" is, as al-Ṭabarsī notes (citing al-ʿAṣr 103), no blanket verdict but one on heedless man who turns from the Bestower he depends on in every breath.