Synthesis: Sūrat al-Dukhān 34–42

Triangulating Majmaʿ al-Bayān (Ṭabarsī), al-Tibyān (Ṭūsī), al-Burhān (Baḥrānī), Tafsīr al-Qummī, al-Mīzān (Ṭabāṭabāʾī), and the Enlightening Commentary.

Human-review flags: al-Mīzān [tabatabai_al_mizan] — rendered for this passage from one long bayān unit (vv. 34–59), faithfully condensed. al-Burhān [bahrani_al_burhan] and Qummī [qummi] carry a distinctly Imāmī reading of v. 42 (the 'one God has mercy on' = ʿAlī and his Shīʿa / the Ahl al-Bayt), rendered as-attributed, not endorsed.

What the passage says. The discourse returns to the deniers of the Resurrection: they say there is nothing beyond 'our first death' and challenge, 'Bring back our fathers if you are truthful' (vv. 34–36). God answers not with argument but with a threat by historical precedent — 'Are they better than the people of Tubbaʿ and those before them?' whom He destroyed (v. 37) — and then with a demonstrative proof: the heavens and earth were not created 'in play' but 'in truth,' which requires a Day of reckoning (vv. 38–39). That Day is named: 'the Day of Decision,' the appointed time of all (v. 40), 'when no patron will avail a patron … except him on whom God has mercy' (vv. 41–42).

The denial and 'our first death' (vv. 34–36). Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī and the Enlightening Commentary agree the speakers are the Meccan polytheists who affirmed God yet denied the Raising, and that the demand to 'bring back our fathers' is met by the principle that resurrection is for requital, not for obligation — so the present abode (of obligation) is not the place for it. Ṭabarsī and the EC both name Abū Jahl as the one who demanded that his ancestor Quṣayy b. Kilāb be raised to be questioned. al-Mīzān alone dwells on the puzzle of why the death is called 'the first,' laying out four grammatical-theological wujūh (including al-Zamakhsharī's and the reading via Q40:11's 'two deaths') and judging the third — that they deny the second death entailing barzakh life — the closest to the sense.

Tubbaʿ and the precedents (v. 37). All four discursive sources (Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, al-Mīzān, EC) identify Tubbaʿ as a Ḥimyarite king of Yemen (Asʿad Abū Karib), and — strikingly — all preserve the tradition that Tubbaʿ himself was saved/believed while only his people were censured: the Prophet's 'Do not revile Tubbaʿ, for he had submitted,' and al-Ṣādiq's report (via al-Walīd b. Ṣabīḥ) that Tubbaʿ told the Aws and Khazraj to await the coming Prophet, 'had I reached him I would have served him.' Ṭabarsī adds his conquests (al-Ḥīra, Samarqand) and the etymology of Tubbaʿ (the many followers, or following Yemen's prior kings — the Tabābiʿa); al-Mīzān's narration appendix adds (al-Durr al-Manthūr) that Tubbaʿ was the first to drape the Kaʿba.

Creation 'in truth' as proof of the Return (vv. 38–39). Here Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, al-Mīzān and the EC fully converge on a single argument: a cosmos created merely to be annihilated would be play (laʿb / ʿabath), which is impossible for the All-Wise; therefore the Hereafter must exist. al-Mīzān states it most formally as a burhān (cross-referencing its fuller treatment at Q21:16 and Q38:27); Ṭūsī notes the verse also refutes those who hold cognitions to be innately necessary, since God here negates the deniers' knowing.

The Day of Decision and the patron (vv. 40–42). All sources gloss yawm al-faṣl as the Day of Resurrection, where truth and falsehood are parted. On 'no patron (mawlā) will avail a patron' (v. 41), Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī and al-Mīzān are careful to reconcile it with intercession (shafāʿa): the verse denies any availing or help without God's leave, and the very exception 'except him on whom God has mercy' (v. 42) is read by Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī as the believers whom God either pardons outright or for whom He permits intercession — al-Mīzān treating the verse as a positive proof of intercession (a help conditioned on the approved religion). Qummī and al-Burhān give v. 42 a distinctly Imāmī turn: the mawlā who avails is the walāya of the Family of Muḥammad, and 'the one God has mercy on' is ʿAlī and his Shīʿa — al-Burhān stacking several chains from al-Ṣādiq ('we are those God has mercy on … and our walāya avails'), all rendered as-attributed and standing beside, not against, the plain-sense reading. The EC closes the unit pastorally: since God's mercy outstrips His wrath, no sinner should despair (Q12:87), yet the pious should hold hope and fear 'like the two pans of a balance.'