إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ عَٰلِمُ غَيْبِ ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضِ ۚ إِنَّهُۥ عَلِيمٌۢ بِذَاتِ ٱلصُّدُورِ
Indeed Allah is the knower of the Unseen of the heavens and the earth. Indeed, He knows well what is in the breasts.
هُوَ ٱلَّذِى جَعَلَكُمْ خَلَٰٓئِفَ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ ۚ فَمَن كَفَرَ فَعَلَيْهِ كُفْرُهُۥ ۖ وَلَا يَزِيدُ ٱلْكَٰفِرِينَ كُفْرُهُمْ عِندَ رَبِّهِمْ إِلَّا مَقْتًۭا ۖ وَلَا يَزِيدُ ٱلْكَٰفِرِينَ كُفْرُهُمْ إِلَّا خَسَارًۭا
It is He who made you successors on the earth. So whoever is faithless, his unfaith is to his own detriment. The unfaith of the faithless does not increase them with their Lord [in anything] except disfavour, and their unfaith increases the faithless in nothing except loss.
قُلْ أَرَءَيْتُمْ شُرَكَآءَكُمُ ٱلَّذِينَ تَدْعُونَ مِن دُونِ ٱللَّهِ أَرُونِى مَاذَا خَلَقُوا۟ مِنَ ٱلْأَرْضِ أَمْ لَهُمْ شِرْكٌۭ فِى ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ أَمْ ءَاتَيْنَٰهُمْ كِتَٰبًۭا فَهُمْ عَلَىٰ بَيِّنَتٍۢ مِّنْهُ ۚ بَلْ إِن يَعِدُ ٱلظَّٰلِمُونَ بَعْضُهُم بَعْضًا إِلَّا غُرُورًا
Say, ‘Tell me about your ‘partners’ whom you invoke besides Allah? Show me what [part] of the earth have they created. Have they any share in the heavens?’ Have We given them a scripture so that they stand on a manifest proof from it? No, the wrongdoers do not promise one another [anything] except delusion.
۞ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ يُمْسِكُ ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضَ أَن تَزُولَا ۚ وَلَئِن زَالَتَآ إِنْ أَمْسَكَهُمَا مِنْ أَحَدٍۢ مِّنۢ بَعْدِهِۦٓ ۚ إِنَّهُۥ كَانَ حَلِيمًا غَفُورًۭا
Indeed Allah sustains the heavens and the earth lest they should fall apart, and if they were to fall apart, there is none who can sustain them except Him. Indeed He is all-forbearing, all-forgiving.
وَأَقْسَمُوا۟ بِٱللَّهِ جَهْدَ أَيْمَٰنِهِمْ لَئِن جَآءَهُمْ نَذِيرٌۭ لَّيَكُونُنَّ أَهْدَىٰ مِنْ إِحْدَى ٱلْأُمَمِ ۖ فَلَمَّا جَآءَهُمْ نَذِيرٌۭ مَّا زَادَهُمْ إِلَّا نُفُورًا
They had sworn by Allah with solemn oaths that if a warner were to come to them, they would be better guided than any of the nations. But when a warner came to them, it only increased their distance [from the truth],
ٱسْتِكْبَارًۭا فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ وَمَكْرَ ٱلسَّيِّئِ ۚ وَلَا يَحِيقُ ٱلْمَكْرُ ٱلسَّيِّئُ إِلَّا بِأَهْلِهِۦ ۚ فَهَلْ يَنظُرُونَ إِلَّا سُنَّتَ ٱلْأَوَّلِينَ ۚ فَلَن تَجِدَ لِسُنَّتِ ٱللَّهِ تَبْدِيلًۭا ۖ وَلَن تَجِدَ لِسُنَّتِ ٱللَّهِ تَحْوِيلًا
due to their domineering [conduct] in the land and their devising of evil schemes; and evil schemes beset only their authors. So do they await anything except the precedent of the ancients? Yet you will never find any change in Allah’s precedent, and you will never find any revision in Allah’s precedent.
أَوَلَمْ يَسِيرُوا۟ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ فَيَنظُرُوا۟ كَيْفَ كَانَ عَٰقِبَةُ ٱلَّذِينَ مِن قَبْلِهِمْ وَكَانُوٓا۟ أَشَدَّ مِنْهُمْ قُوَّةًۭ ۚ وَمَا كَانَ ٱللَّهُ لِيُعْجِزَهُۥ مِن شَىْءٍۢ فِى ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَلَا فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ ۚ إِنَّهُۥ كَانَ عَلِيمًۭا قَدِيرًۭا
Have they not travelled over the land so that they may observe how was the fate of those who were before them? They were more powerful than them, and Allah is not to be frustrated by anything in the heavens or on the earth. Indeed, He is all-knowing, all-powerful.
وَلَوْ يُؤَاخِذُ ٱللَّهُ ٱلنَّاسَ بِمَا كَسَبُوا۟ مَا تَرَكَ عَلَىٰ ظَهْرِهَا مِن دَآبَّةٍۢ وَلَٰكِن يُؤَخِّرُهُمْ إِلَىٰٓ أَجَلٍۢ مُّسَمًّۭى ۖ فَإِذَا جَآءَ أَجَلُهُمْ فَإِنَّ ٱللَّهَ كَانَ بِعِبَادِهِۦ بَصِيرًۢا
Were Allah to take humans to task because of what they have earned, He would not leave any living being on its back. But He respites them until a specified time, and when their time comes, [He retributes them in accordance with their works], for Allah has been watching His servants.
English translation: Ali Quli Qarai
Triangulating Ṭabarsī (Majmaʿ al-Bayān) [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan], Qummī [qummi], Ṭūsī (al-Tibyān) [tusi_al_tibyan], al-Baḥrānī (al-Burhān) [bahrani_al_burhan], and al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī (al-Mīzān) [tabatabai_al_mizan]. All five sources are present for this final passage of the sūra.
Human-review flags: al-Mīzān [tabatabai_al_mizan] is flagged
needs_human_review— its first bayān unit (start-āyah 27) straddles the previous passage, so vv.27–37 were condensed to substance while v.38, the inheritor-class material, and the full baḥth riwāʾī were translated more fully; the v.39–45 unit is rendered in full.
What the passage says. These eight verses close the sūra by gathering its three themes into a final argument. God is the Knower of the unseen and of what lies in the breasts (v.38); He made mankind khalāʾif (successors) on the earth, so disbelief harms only the disbeliever, increasing him in God's maqt (loathing) and in loss (v.39); the false "partners" created nothing and hold no Book (v.40); God alone holds the heavens and earth lest they cease (v.41); the Meccans who swore they would out-guide every nation recoiled when the warner came (vv.42–43), out of arrogance and evil scheming that besets only its authors — for God's sunna admits neither tabdīl nor taḥwīl; the ruined stronger nations are a warning (v.44); and were God to punish people for what they earn He would leave no creature on the earth, but He defers them to an appointed term (v.45) — closing, as the Enlightening Commentary [enlightening_commentary] notes, on the same divine mercy with which the sūra opened.
How the present sources read it. On the qirāʾāt, Ṭabarsī [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] and Ṭūsī [tusi_al_tibyan] agree closely (both Basran-school): they record yujzā/najzī (passive vs. "We recompense") and bayyina/bayyināt at v.36, and at v.43 the dispute over Ḥamza's silent-hamza reading of makr al-sayyiʾ, which al-Zajjāj (per Ṭabarsī) and the Basrans (per Ṭūsī) brand a poetic-license solecism. Ṭūsī adds the al-ʿadd (verse-count) variants and Ibn Masʿūd's reading makran sayyiʾan. On khalāʾif (v.39), the two converge on Qatāda's gloss "nation after nation"; the Enlightening Commentary [enlightening_commentary] preserves the dual sense — vicegerents of God or successors to former nations — preferring the latter. All sources gloss maqt as ashadd al-bughḍ (most intense hatred).
al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī [tabatabai_al_mizan] reframes the whole as one sustained proof of tawḥīd al-rubūbiyya: succession is a mode of governance inseparable from creation, so the Creator (conceded even by the adversary to be God) must be the Lord; and v.41's "holding" is His ibqāʾ — a continuous bestowal-of-existence-after-existence that the contingent needs as much as origination. His distinction at v.43 is sharper than the others': where Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī gloss tabdīl as substituting one thing for another and taḥwīl as moving a thing to another place, al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī specifies tabdīl = putting wellbeing in the place of punishment, taḥwīl = transferring punishment from a deserving people to others — and notes God enacted this sunna against the Meccan plotters at Badr. On dābba (v.45) he, like Ṭūsī ("what crawls on its legs") and the Enlightening Commentary (from dabīb), gives both the human-only and all-animals readings, the latter justified by animals being created for man.
Shīʿī taʾwīl, as-attributed. The narration-driven sources carry readings the others do not. Qummī [qummi] and al-Baḥrānī [bahrani_al_burhan] both report ʿAlī's letter to his Shīʿa applying v.43's "the evil plot besets only its authors" to the Battle of the Camel — Ṭalḥa, al-Zubayr, and ʿĀʾisha's baghy, makr, and nakth against him. al-Baḥrānī additionally chains a Kāfī report (al-Ṣādiq) glossing "travel in the land" (v.44, via al-Rūm 30:42) as "look into the Qurʾān," and both Qummī and al-Baḥrānī carry the Prophetic qadar ḥadīth (Sakūnī ← al-Ṣādiq ← al-Bāqir) that frames felicity/wretchedness around wilāya for the believers and barāʾa for the polytheists. al-Mīzān's baḥth riwāʾī, reaching back into v.32, reports al-Riḍā and al-Bāqir reading the three inheritor-classes as the children of Fāṭima — al-sābiq bi-l-khayrāt = the Imām, al-muqtaṣid = the one who knows the Imām, al-ẓālim = the one who does not — alongside the mainstream gradation (foremost / easy-reckoned / detained-then-pardoned). Notably, no source here carries a narration tying v.41's cosmic stability to the Imām or ḥujja; al-Mīzān's v.41 treatment is purely philosophical. That as-attributed reading is simply absent from this passage's fetched text and has not been supplied.
Sources present: tabarsi_majma_al_bayan, qummi, tusi_al_tibyan, bahrani_al_burhan, tabatabai_al_mizan; silent: none.