Sūrah 14 · Āyāt 42–52

Sūrat Ibrāhīm 42–52 — The Respite and the End

This closing passage answers the doubt running beneath the whole sūra: if the call comes from "the Mighty, the Praised," why do the wrongdoers go untouched? al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī (al-Mīzān) frames the unit as a reply to "the weak-minded" — Allah is neither heedless (v. 42) nor a breaker of His promise (v. 47); He only defers. The reprieve is fixed practice, not negligence.

The horror of the Day (vv. 42–43). All four primary sources converge on the philology of the frozen, staring damned. al-Ṭabarsī (Majmaʿ al-Bayān) and al-Ṭūsī (al-Tibyān) gloss muhṭiʿīn (hastening, or ever-gazing — Saʿīd b. Jubayr, al-Ḥasan, Qatāda vs. Ibn ʿAbbās, Mujāhid), muqniʿī ruʾūsihim (heads thrust up until a man cannot see his own feet; Muʾarrij alone reads heads bowed), and afʾidatuhum hawāʾ — hearts hollow as empty air. al-Qummī sharpens it: the eyes cannot blink "from the horror of Hell"; the hearts "split apart from violent throbbing (al-khafaqān)."

Two warnings (v. 44). al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī's signature point: vv. 42–43 warn of the Resurrection, but v. 44 onward warns of ʿadhāb al-istiʾṣāl — extirpation in this world. His proof is grammatical — "so those who wronged will say," not "so they (the people) will say" — because extirpation spares the believers (Yūnus 103). al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī add the doctrinal point, pressed against al-Najjār and the Jabriyya, that the plea "defer us" proves the people of the Hereafter are not under accountability (taklīf).

The plot and the promise (vv. 45–47). On "even were their plot to move mountains," al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī give the recitations in full: al-Kisāʾī's la-tazūlu (magnifying the plot) against the majority li-tazūla (negating it), with Abū ʿAlī al-Fārisī's grammar and the gloss that "the mountains" stand for the Prophet's immovable affair. Both cite the Nimrod tradition (Namrūd b. Kūsh b. Kanʿān binding a chest to four starved vultures to assault the sky; al-Ṭūsī: "the man of the two vultures," from Saʿīd b. Jubayr). al-Qummī alone gives a contemporary taʾwīl: the destroyed "wrongdoers" are the Banū Umayya, their plot "the plot of the Banū So-and-so." On v. 47, al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī mounts a discourse on intiqām: divine retribution is never rancour-slaking (tashaffī) but the social right of the divine law — as His mercy is rational, not psychological.

The changed earth (v. 48). This is the narrative heart, and al-Baḥrānī (al-Burhān) is almost wholly riwāya — fourteen narrations. The dominant Imāmī reading (al-Abrash al-Kalbī, Zurāra, Nāfiʿ, ʿAbd Allāh b. Sinān, from al-Bāqir and al-Ṣādiq, ʿalayhimā al-salām): the earth becomes "a pure loaf the people eat from until the Reckoning is finished," for the hollow son of Adam still needs food. Thuwayr b. Abī Fākhita from ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn (ʿalayhi al-salām) gives the other strand: an earth "laid bare, no mountains or vegetation, as He spread it the first time (daḥāhā)." al-Baḥrānī and al-Mīzān both preserve Imam al-Bāqir silencing the caliph Hishām b. ʿAbd al-Malik in the Sacred Mosque, and the report of the seven worlds before Adam. al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī harmonizes them: their very divergence shows they are likenesses (amthāl); earth and heaven remain themselves, under a wholly other order.

The criminals and the close (vv. 49–52). al-Ṭabarsī, al-Ṭūsī, al-Qummī, and al-Baḥrānī agree the mujrimūn are bound "one to another" (muqarranīn fī al-aṣfād), or each chained to his misleading devil (al-Ṣāffāt 22). On qaṭirān, all keep the variant qiṭr ān (molten brass at peak heat — Ibn ʿAbbās), and Abū al-Jārūd's narration from al-Bāqir (ʿalayhi al-salām) glosses it exactly so. Finally, al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī and al-Ṭabarsī note that v. 52 seals the sūra back to its opening: "this is a proclamation (balāgh)" answers "a Book… to bring people from darkness to light, to the path of the Mighty, the Praised." Whether they believe (light in act) or are merely warned (knowledge of tawḥīd — itself a coming-forth from darkness), the call reaches all, but only ulū al-albāb take heed. al-Qummī and al-Baḥrānī read "this" (hādhā) as Muḥammad himself, the living proclamation.