Synthesis: Sūrat al-Anbiyāʾ 42–50

Triangulating Ṭabarsī (Majmaʿ al-Bayān) [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan], al-Qummī [qummi], al-Ṭūsī (al-Tibyān) [tusi_al_tibyan], al-Baḥrānī (al-Burhān) [bahrani_al_burhan], and al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī (al-Mīzān) [tabatabai_al_mizan], with the published Enlightening Commentary [enlightening_commentary].

Human-review flags: al-Mīzān [tabatabai_al_mizan] — its exegetical units are coarse (one covers 21:34–47, the next 21:48–77). Only the portions treating vv. 42–50 were rendered; al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī's long lexical excursus on nafs/mawt (v. 35) and his exposition of vv. 36–41 and 51-ff (Ibrāhīm) were deliberately omitted as out of passage. Verify the scoping.

What the passage says. The unit closes the sūrah's argument against the heedless Meccans (vv. 42–46) and pivots to the prophetic gallery (vv. 48–50). Allāh challenges them: who guards them "night and day" from the All-beneficent (v. 42)? Their idols can neither help themselves nor shield them (v. 43); long enjoyment has merely deluded them while the earth is "diminished at its edges" (v. 44); the Prophet warns only by revelation, but "the deaf do not hear" (v. 45) — until "a whiff" of punishment makes them confess their wrongdoing (v. 46). Then the great assurance: "just scales" for the Day of Resurrection, where not even a mustard-seed's weight is lost (v. 47). Finally, Mūsā and Hārūn were given "the Criterion, a light and reminder for the Godwary" (vv. 48–49), just as "this blessed Reminder," the Qurʾān, has now been sent down (v. 50).

How the sources read it. The two full classical commentaries, Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī, converge almost completely on the language. Both gloss al-nafḥa (v. 46) as a slight stroke of punishment, and both transmit Qatāda's reading of al-mawāzīn al-qisṭ (v. 47) as "justice in requiting everyone according to desert," cross-referencing the fuller treatment of "the scale" in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf. They share the variant readings: Abū Jaʿfar and Nāfiʿ read mithqālu ḥabbatin in the nominative (making kāna intransitive), the rest in the accusative; and ātaynā bihā with a long ā, which Ṭabarsī [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] explicitly traces to al-Ṣādiq with the sense "We requited with it." On v. 48 both identify al-Furqān as the Torah (Mujāhid, Qatāda), while preserving the alternative — al-Ṭūsī via Ibn Zayd — that it is the proof separating Mūsā's truth from Pharaoh's falsehood (cf. 8:41). al-Ṭūsī [tusi_al_tibyan] uniquely records al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī's picture of a literal two-pan balance, one pan light and one darkness. Both close on v. 50 by reading "sent down… blessed" as proof of the Qurʾān's origination in time (ḥudūth).

al-Qummī [qummi] is terse, glossing only v. 47: the scales are al-mujāzāt (the requital), with ātaynā read long — a reading al-Baḥrānī [bahrani_al_burhan] reproduces verbatim as ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm's report (#10).

The distinctively Shīʿī proof-text on v. 47 dominates al-Baḥrānī and surfaces in al-Mīzān: multiple chains (al-Kulaynī from al-Ṣādiq; al-Ṣadūq via Hishām b. Sālim; Ibn Shahrāshūb) read "the scales" as the Prophets and the Legatees/Imāms of Muḥammad's House, with Ibn ʿAbbās (via al-Bursī) saying they are "the Prophets and the Friends [of Allāh]." al-Baḥrānī [bahrani_al_burhan] balances this with a strong rationalist control: al-Mufīd (#9) insists deeds are accidents that cannot literally be weighed, so "heavy/light" is metaphor for abundance and merit — and the Imāms "are the scales" precisely as the ones who balance deeds with equity. The same volume preserves ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn's striking teaching (#1) that the scales are set up only for the people of Islam, not the polytheists, who are "herded to Hell in throngs."

al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī [tabatabai_al_mizan] adds the integrating logic: v. 44's "diminishing the land at its edges" is the extinction of communities (each with its term), and his narrations gloss it as "the passing of its learned ones." He frames al-qisṭ as apposition to "the scales" and notes the weighing is itself part of the reckoning. On v. 48 he explains why al-Furqān takes the article (it is a proper name of the Torah) while ḍiyāʾ and dhikr stay indefinite — the Torah is the Criterion for all but light and reminder for the Godwary alone.

The Enlightening Commentary [enlightening_commentary] tracks this Shīʿī line in published English — naming the scales as the prophets, Imāms, and the righteous, and reading the shared attributes (Furqān, light, reminder) as common to Torah and Qurʾān alike.

Sources present: tabarsi_majma_al_bayan, qummi, tusi_al_tibyan, bahrani_al_burhan, tabatabai_al_mizan, enlightening_commentary; silent: none.