Sūrat Yā-Sīn · Āyāt 33–47

What the passage says

After warning the deniers in Mecca that earlier nations were destroyed and will be raised for judgment, the passage pivots to a parade of God's signs in the natural world — proofs of His lordship and of the Resurrection — and ends by indicting those who turn away from every sign and refuse to feed the poor.

The dead earth brought back to life (v. 33). A sign for them is the lifeless, parched land that God revives, bringing out of it the grain people eat — wheat, barley, rice. Reviving dead soil is presented as a decisive proof that the One who does this can also raise the dead.

Orchards, palms, vines, and gushing springs (vv. 34–35). God plants gardens of date-palms and grapevines and splits the earth open so springs gush out to water them — so that people may eat the fruit, fruit their own hands did not make. Will they not then give thanks?

Glory to the One who created all the pairs (v. 36). A burst of praise: God, free of every need, created everything in pairs — among what the earth grows, among human beings (male and female), and among things people know nothing about.

Night stripped of its day (v. 37). Another sign: the night, from which God strips away the daylight, leaving people suddenly in darkness — as if the day's light were a garment pulled off the body of the night.

The sun running to its resting-place (v. 38). The sun runs on to a fixed resting-place. That is the measured decree of the Mighty, the All-Knowing.

The moon and its phases (v. 39). For the moon God appointed stages — its monthly cycle — until at month's end it thins and curves back like an old, dried date-stalk.

The unbreakable cosmic order (v. 40). The sun is not allowed to overtake the moon, nor does the night outrun the day; each floats along in its own orbit. The order never slips.

The laden ship, and its like (vv. 41–42). A sign for them is that God carried their offspring in the loaded ship, and made for them the like of it — other things they ride.

Drowning, and the mercy that spares them (vv. 43–44). If God willed, He could drown them, with no one to cry to for help and no rescue — except as a mercy from Him, an enjoyment granted for a time.

Turning away from warning, and from every sign (vv. 45–46). When they are told, "Beware of what lies before you and what lies behind you, so that you may receive mercy," they turn back. No sign of their Lord ever reaches them without their turning away from it.

Refusing to spend (v. 47). When told, "Spend out of what God has provided you," the deniers sneer at the believers: "Shall we feed someone God could feed Himself if He wished? You are plainly mistaken."

Convergence — where the six agree

• The whole block reads as one sustained argument: God's signs in creation and in human sustenance prove His sole lordship and the Resurrection, then the deniers are rebuked for ignoring those signs and withholding charity. Ṭabāṭabāʾī (al-Mīzān) frames it as turning "to presenting the signs of the divine hand," then censuring those who refuse "to spend on the poor and destitute"; the Enlightening Commentary likewise reads Unity and Resurrection as stated "together … as a means for rejecters to become aware."
• On the plain meaning of the cosmic signs there is broad agreement across the four sources that comment thematically — Ṭabāṭabāʾī (al-Mīzān), the Enlightening Commentary, Ṭabarsī (Majmaʿ al-Bayān), and Ṭūsī (al-Tibyān): the revived dead earth as proof of resurrection, the gardens and gushing springs, the night stripped of day, the sun's mustaqarr (resting-place), the moon's twenty-eight stages, the "old date-stalk," the unbreakable orbits, and the ark.
• The lexicon lines up: drawing on al-Rāghib's dictionary, jannah is a tree-covered orchard, nakhīl the plural of "palm," aʿnāb the plural of "grape" (Ṭabāṭabāʾī and the Enlightening Commentary); al-salkh ("strip") is pulling a thing out of its garment, like flaying a hide (Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī); al-ʿurjūn is the date-stalk that bears the small branches (Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī).
• On the sun's resting-place (v. 38), Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī report the same three classical readings — until the world ends, to one appointed time (Qatāda), or to the furthest of its stations — and Ṭabāṭabāʾī and the Enlightening Commentary add the modern reading of the sun travelling with the solar system toward the star Vega, presenting it as compatible with the verse, not opposed to it.
• A shared Imāmī narrational layer runs underneath. Al-Baḥrānī (al-Burhān) and al-Qummī carry, almost word-for-word, the same report from Imam al-Ṣādiq through al-Ḥalabī on the sperm-drop falling from the sky onto plants at v. 36; the same report from Imam al-Bāqir that "the sun is the authority of the day and the moon the authority of the night" at v. 40; and the same gloss of the "laden ship" as "the filled ships" with "the like of it" as "riding-beasts and cattle" at vv. 41–42.

Divergence — where they differ

• The sharpest difference is method, not meaning. Al-Baḥrānī (al-Burhān) is a purely narrational tafsīr and is genuinely silent at vv. 33, 34, 35, 43, 44, and 46 — the source itself records "the commentary of this verse is not present." Al-Qummī is selective, transmitting nothing at v. 33 and giving distinct comment only at vv. 36, 37, 38–39, 40, and 41–42. So their silence is a feature of genre, not disagreement with the others.
• On "what their hands did not make" (v. 35), the grammarians keep both options open: Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī note mā can be negating ("their hands did not make it") or relative ("that which their hands made"). Ṭabāṭabāʾī takes only the negating sense and rejects the relative reading as out of step with the argument.
• On "Beware of what is before you and what is behind you" (v. 45), the sources split on which clause means what. Ṭabarsī and al-Burhān transmit Imam al-Ṣādiq through al-Ḥalabī as "before you = sins, behind you = the requital." Ṭabāṭabāʾī cites the same report but with the halves assigned in the reverse order. Ṭūsī adds Qatāda's pairing (God's punishment / the Hour) and Mujāhid's (sins to come / past sins); the Enlightening Commentary settles on this-worldly chastisement ahead and the Hereafter behind.
• A handful of points are carried by a single source. Ṭūsī alone closes with the Prophetic report on the three blasts of the Trumpet — terror, swooning, and standing before the Lord of the worlds. Al-Burhān alone transmits the esoteric reading of v. 37 in which the Prophet is likened to the sun and his Legatee (waṣī) to the moon, with the "stripping of the day" taken as the Prophet's passing — presented as what that narration reports, not as the verse's only sense. The Enlightening Commentary alone presses a science-minded reading of "the pairs" (the law of pairing, positive and negative particles), while Ṭabāṭabāʾī, by contrast, rejects reading "pairs" as type-and-subtype on the basis of Q 51:49.
• On "the like of it" they ride (v. 42), Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī report the view that it means camels ("the ships of the land," from Mujāhid and Ibn ʿAbbās) without comment; Ṭabāṭabāʾī and the Enlightening Commentary prefer a broad reading that could even take in aircraft, and Ṭabāṭabāʾī dismisses the camels-only and "Noah's ark plus later ships" readings as unsophisticated.

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