Sūrah 78 · Āyāt 31–40

The Triumph of the God-wary and the Final Warning — verses 31–40

The sūra's last movement turns from the rebels to the God-wary, for whom there is mafāz — triumph: walled gardens and vineyards, maidens of equal age, a brimming cup, and a gathering purified of idle talk and lies. It culminates in the standing of the Spirit and the angels, the True Day, and a warning sharp enough that the disbeliever wishes himself dust.

The reward. On mafāz, Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī and al-Mīzān agree it joins two senses — deliverance from the Fire and attainment of good; Ṭūsī notes the irony that the deadly desert is itself called mafāza "by way of omen." The lexical sources work the imagery in concert: ḥadāʾiq are walled gardens, aʿnāb grapes before drying, kawāʿib atrāb maidens of even age and form, and kaʾs dihāq the cup "filled to the utmost" (Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, al-Mīzān). Qummī adds the Imāmī gloss of Abū Jaʿfar that the "triumph" is "the [divine] honours" (al-karāmāt). On a gift, a reckoning (ʿaṭāʾan ḥisāban), the sources balance two readings — an ample gift, or a gift by measure of each one's deed — al-Mīzān observing that ascribing "the requital" to "your Lord" honours the Prophet, whereas God does not ascribe the rebels' punishment to Himself, "no evil befalling them but from themselves" (3:182).

The standing of the Spirit. The theological heart of the passage is the Day the Spirit (al-Rūḥ) and the angels stand in ranks. Every Arabic source canvasses the identity of al-Rūḥ. Ṭabarsī's five views (a creation in human form, a supreme angel, the spirits of the dead between the two blasts, Gabriel, or the children of Adam) are mirrored by Ṭūsī, who notes the "supreme angel" view is "what is related in our [Imāmī] reports," and by Qummī and al-Baḥrānī, who state plainly that "the Spirit is an angel greater than Gabriel and Michael … with the Imams." al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī raises this to a full excursus on what al-Rūḥ is throughout the Qurʾān — defining it from the Spirit is of the command of my Lord (17:85) as the "word of bringing-into-being," an independent heavenly creation distinct from the angels in Sūrat al-Qadr, with graded effusions in man, the believer and the prophets.

Permission to speak, and the wish to be dust. On they speak not save he whom the All-Merciful permits, the sources read the silence of that Day as the absence of intercession except by leave. Here Ṭabarsī, al-Baḥrānī and al-Mīzān all transmit the same tradition from al-Ṣādiq (and al-Kāẓim): By God, we [the Imams] are the permitted ones … we glorify our Lord, bless our Prophet, and intercede for our Shīʿa. al-Mīzān carefully frames this as "citing some instances," allowing other intercessors among prophets, angels and believers. The sūra ends with the disbeliever's cry, O would that I were dust. The plain sense, given by Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī and al-Mīzān, is the wish to be annihilated and so escape the reckoning; Qummī and al-Baḥrānī add the distinctive Imāmī taʾwīl — reading turāb as turābī, one of the Shīʿa of ʿAlī (Abū Turāb) — offered as the inner sense, not the plain meaning.