Sūrat al-Raʿd 36–43 — Six-Source Triangulation (surah conclusion)

Present sources: Ṭabarsī, Majmaʿ al-Bayān [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] (its blocks here begin at v.38 — vv.36–37 were rendered in Passage 4); Ṭūsī, al-Tibyān [tusi_al_tibyan]; al-Qummī [qummi]; Ṭabāṭabāʾī, al-Mīzān [tabatabai_al_mizan] (Arabic original, translated here — blocks 36–42 and 43); al-Baḥrānī, al-Burhān [bahrani_al_burhan] (āyāt 38–43; the v.31–36 grouped page was rendered in Passage 4). Silent: An Enlightening Commentary [enlightening_commentary] — al-islam.org Cloudflare-blocked all run.

What the passage says. Those given the Book rejoice at the revelation, though some parties deny part of it (v.36); it is "an Arabic judgement" — follow not their desires (v.37). Messengers before had wives and offspring, and none brought a sign "save by God's leave — for every term a Book" (v.38); "God effaces what He wills and confirms, and with Him is the Mother of the Book" (v.39). The Prophet's task is only to convey, God's the reckoning (v.40). God "comes to the land diminishing it at its edges," judging with none to reverse Him (v.41); the schemers of old were foiled, "to God belongs the scheming altogether" (v.42); and to the charge "you are not a messenger" the answer: "God suffices as witness between me and you, and he who has knowledge of the Book" (v.43).

Who "rejoice" (v.36). [tabatabai_al_mizan] argues, on the Meccan dating and the Qurʾān's usage, that "those given the Book" are the non-hostile Jews, Christians (especially the truthful, like the Negus) and Magians — the closing "worship God, associate nothing" best fitting Christians — the "parties" denying tawḥīd against the Trinity. [tusi_al_tibyan] reports both this and "the Companions." [qummi] gives the walāya reading (via Ibn Masʿūd's variant): the rejoicer is ʿAlī, and the "part" denied is the taʾwīl concerning ʿAlī and the House.

"For every term a Book" and the Mother of the Book (vv.38–39). This is the passage's doctrinal heart, and here the sources converge on badāʾ. On v.38, [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] and [bahrani_al_burhan] share the occasion (the taunt at the Prophet's marriages) and al-Ṣādiq's "we are the offspring of the Messenger of God." On v.39, [tabatabai_al_mizan] builds the fullest treatment: effacing/confirming is general (not confined to abrogation, the records, sins, etc.), grounded in {for every term a Book}, while "the Mother of the Book" is the fixed root that saves God's decree from both external compulsion and arbitrariness — concluding that badāʾ (the manifesting of an affair after its contrary appeared, never a change in God's knowledge) is real and that the dispute over it is "largely verbal." [qummi] and [bahrani_al_burhan] carry the same doctrine through the Night-of-Decree traditions and al-Ṣādiq's epigram "is anything effaced but what was established, or confirmed but what was not?"; [bahrani_al_burhan] adds the Adam–David lifespan ḥadīth and al-Bāqir's "two knowledges" (the taught and the treasured). [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] and [tusi_al_tibyan] list the eight classical glosses of "effacing/confirming" and the majority equation of "the Mother of the Book" with the Preserved Tablet.

"Diminishing the land at its edges" (v.41). A four-way convergence on the Shīʿī reading: [qummi], [bahrani_al_burhan], [tabatabai_al_mizan] (in its narrative section) and [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] all carry the tradition (Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn / al-Ṣādiq) that the "diminishing" is "the loss of the scholars," Burhān adding Ibn ʿAbbās's lament at ʿAlī's death ("the greatest edge in knowledge") and the ḥadīth that God seizes knowledge by seizing the scholars. [tabatabai_al_mizan] and [tusi_al_tibyan] also record the "death of its people" and "the conquests for the Muslims" readings, al-Mīzān preferring "death/destruction of its people" on Meccan-context grounds.

The closing witness (v.43). The surah's seal draws the sources' fullest agreement. All the Shīʿī authorities — [qummi], [bahrani_al_burhan] and [tabatabai_al_mizan] — identify "he who has knowledge of the Book" as ʿAlī and the Imams, anchored in the arresting Sadīr–al-Ṣādiq ḥadīth: Āṣaf, who had "knowledge from the Book," had only "a drop from the green sea," whereas "the knowledge of the Book, by God, is all of it with us." [tabatabai_al_mizan] mounts the tightest argument: God's witness is a witness of delivery (the Qurʾān as His testifying speech, not a mere deed), and — the sūra being Meccan by consensus and its close bound to its opening — the identification with the post-Hijra convert ʿAbd Allāh b. Salām must fail, leaving ʿAlī ("were there but the mass-transmitted ḥadīth of the Two Weighty Things"). [tusi_al_tibyan] lists all three views (God; the believing People of the Book; the Imams), noting Saʿīd b. Jubayr's own rejection of the Ibn-Salām reading on the same Meccan grounds. [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] likewise gathers the three views with the ʿAlid traditions and al-Shaʿbī's testimony. Thus the surah that opened "that which was sent down to you … is the truth" closes with God, and the one who bears the Book's whole knowledge, as its witnesses. No claim rests on the silent Enlightening Commentary. — And it is done, praise be to God.