Sūrah 94 · Āyāt 5–6

Verses 5–6 — "For surely with hardship there is ease"

These two verses — identical but for the opening fāʾ — are the rhetorical heart of the surah, and the present sources read them as both consolation and grammar. Ṭabarsī sets the scene: "God promised ease and relief after hardship, for he was at Mecca in hardship." He records the celebrated report, via ʿAṭāʾ from Ibn ʿAbbās, of God's words "I created one hardship and I created two eases, so one hardship shall not overcome two eases," and al-Ḥasan's account of the Prophet emerging one day "glad and laughing," repeating that very phrase. (This report — narrated by al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and Qatāda about 94:5–6 — was independently web-verified for this entry.)

The grammatical argument is shared across the Arabic sources. Ṭabarsī quotes al-Farrāʾ: a repeated indefinite noun yields two distinct things ("earn a dirham, spend a dirham" — two coins), whereas a repeated definite noun is one and the same ("earn the dirham, spend the dirham"). Since al-ʿusr ("the hardship") carries the definite article in both verses, it is one hardship; since yusr ("ease") is indefinite in both, it is two eases — hence "one hardship shall not overcome two eases." Ṭūsī gives the same reasoning compactly, treating it as proof that the earlier "removing of the burden" really did promise relief. al-Mīzān adds the finer points: the article in al-ʿusr is generic (li-l-jins), the nunation in yusran marks "type-distinction" not magnification, and the "withness" (maʿiyya) is succession, not simultaneity — ease follows hardship in God's unvarying way (sunna) of "the turning-about of events."

Ṭabarsī preserves a striking second reading from the author of Kitāb al-Naẓm (al-Jurjānī): the two verses are not mere repetition but two promises — ease in this world (the Prophet did not die before the Ḥijāz and Yemen were opened to him, giving "two hundred camels at a time") and ease in the Hereafter for every believer — the absence of any connective fāʾ or wāw on the second verse marking it as a fresh, universal pledge. al-Mīzān weighs and partly resists al-Zamakhsharī's narrower reading (that the "ease" was the later spoils and the taunt was over poverty), objecting that the Prophet's mind was too lofty to suppose the disbelievers shunned Islam merely for its poverty, and that most never believed even after Islam's triumph (citing 36:7–10 and 2:6). Qummī distills the whole to one line: "the ease came to you out of the hardship you were in." al-Burhān is silent here — it preserves no narration specific to ʿusr/yusr, which is recorded honestly rather than filled in. The Enlightening Commentary reads the doubled promise pastorally: "do not grieve for the difficulties… they will convert to ease," the impediments of the enemies not lasting long.