Sūrah 52 · Āyāt 29–34

al-Tur 29-34 — The Prophet defended, and the challenge

Here the address turns to the Prophet: remind — by the grace of your Lord you are neither soothsayer nor madman; the deniers' jibes (a poet whose death we await) are met with Say: Wait — I too am waiting; then a cascade of rhetorical questions begins — do their minds bid this? are they transgressors? do they say he fabricated it? — capped by the challenge then let them bring a discourse like it, if they are truthful, and the argument from creation (were they created from nothing, or are they the creators?).

al-Mizan frames the whole run (vv.29-44) as God negating sixteen conceivable excuses — some touching the Prophet (soothsayer, madman, poet, fabricator, wage-seeker), some the deniers themselves — under a steady rebuke. It stresses that by the grace of your Lord is a favour special to the Prophet: not merely that he lacks these faults (most people do) but that a special grace forbids them from befalling him. Wait — I too am waiting it reads as a threat: there is indeed a matter to await, but it falls against them. On let them bring a discourse like it, al-Mizan and al-Tabarsi take it as the argument from inimitability (iʿjaz): were the Qurʾan the Prophet's own speech, human speech could match it (al-Mizan referring back to 2:23); al-Tusi lists five marks of the highest eloquence the challenge invokes. On created from nothing, the three read it variously — created in vain, uncommanded, without a Maker, or (al-Mizan's preferred, fullest sense) from no substance such as would fit them to bear no charge — closing on nay, they are not certain.

al-Tabarsi and al-Tusi supply the lexicon (al-manun = death; rayb al-manun = the accidents of fate; al-ahlam = the minds Quraysh were reputed to possess, here derided) and note that taqawwul is said only of a lie.

The Qummi reading is distinctive and is rendered strictly as-attributed. Where the plain sense makes he fabricated it the deniers' charge about the Qurʾan, al-Qummi (and al-Bahrani, carrying the same report in its vv.21-40 block) turns the pronoun onto the Commander of the Faithful (ʿAli): Or do they say — O Muhammad — he fabricated it? — meaning ʿAli, and reads let them bring a discourse like it as a man like him from God. This rereads the iʿjaz challenge as a challenge about ʿAli rather than the Qurʾan; it diverges sharply from the plain sense and from al-Mizan, al-Tabarsi and al-Tusi, and is flagged for human review. On the transgressors, al-Tusi notes God's forbearance (He is halim, reprieving as wisdom dictates).