يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا قُوا أَنفُسَكُمْ وَأَهْلِيكُمْ نَارًا وَقُودُهَا النَّاسُ وَالْحِجَارَةُ عَلَيْهَا مَلَائِكَةٌ غِلَاظٌ شِدَادٌ لَّا يَعْصُونَ اللَّهَ مَا أَمَرَهُمْ وَيَفْعَلُونَ مَا يُؤْمَرُونَ
O you who have faith! Save yourselves and your families from a Fire whose fuel will be people and stones, over which are [assigned] severe and mighty angels, who do not disobey whatever Allah commands them and carry out what they are commanded.
يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا لَا تَعْتَذِرُوا الْيَوْمَ ۖ إِنَّمَا تُجْزَوْنَ مَا كُنتُمْ تَعْمَلُونَ
[They will call out to the faithless:] ‘O faithless ones! Do not make any excuses today. You are being requited only for what you used to do.’
يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا تُوبُوا إِلَى اللَّهِ تَوْبَةً نَّصُوحًا عَسَىٰ رَبُّكُمْ أَن يُكَفِّرَ عَنكُمْ سَيِّئَاتِكُمْ وَيُدْخِلَكُمْ جَنَّاتٍ تَجْرِي مِن تَحْتِهَا الْأَنْهَارُ يَوْمَ لَا يُخْزِي اللَّهُ النَّبِيَّ وَالَّذِينَ آمَنُوا مَعَهُ ۖ نُورُهُمْ يَسْعَىٰ بَيْنَ أَيْدِيهِمْ وَبِأَيْمَانِهِمْ يَقُولُونَ رَبَّنَا أَتْمِمْ لَنَا نُورَنَا وَاغْفِرْ لَنَا ۖ إِنَّكَ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَيْءٍ قَدِيرٌ
O you who have faith! Repent to Allah with sincere repentance! Maybe your Lord will absolve you of your misdeeds and admit you into gardens with streams running in them, on the day when Allah will not let down the Prophet and the faithful who are with him. Their light will move swiftly before them and on their right. They will say, ‘Our Lord! Perfect our light for us, and forgive us! Indeed You have power over all things.’
English translation: Ali Quli Qarai
After disciplining the Prophet's wives, the address widens to the whole community: "O you who believe, guard yourselves and your families from a Fire whose fuel is people and stones." The passage moves from warning (the Fire and its stern angels), through the closed door of the Day of Judgment ("make no excuses today"), to the open door of sincere repentance and the light that runs before the faithful.
Guarding the household. Al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī read "guard" (qū) as a double duty: guarding oneself by patient obedience, and one's family by teaching, enjoining good and forbidding evil — al-Ṭūsī drawing the rule that amr bi'l-maʿrūf begins with the nearest of kin. Al-Mīzān sets the verse as a "generalization after a particular," widening the household discipline of vv. 1–5 to all believers, and reads the people being the Fire's fuel as the embodiment of their own deeds (tajassum al-aʿmāl). The narration sources make this vivid and concrete: al-Qummī, al-Burhān and al-Mīzān all carry the Abū Baṣīr report from al-Ṣādiq — "command them with what God commanded and forbid them what God forbade; if they obey, you have guarded them; if they disobey, you have done what was upon you" — and the report of the believer who wept, "I was unable for myself, now I am charged with my family," answered by the Prophet's mercy. Al-Burhān adds that "O you who believe" embraces even the outward professors of faith, and the striking Iḥtijāj tradition of the weeping mountain that feared to be one of the Fire's stones until told they are the stones of sulfur.
The angels who do not disobey. On "angels stern and severe who disobey not God," all three commentary sources affirm the angels' infallibility. Al-Ṭabarsī names the nineteen Zabāniya; al-Ṭūsī adds al-Rummānī's argument that an angel cannot sin because it holds only to the intellect's call, not appetite; and both report al-Jubbāʾī's view that the Hereafter is an abode of requital, not moral charge. Al-Mīzān develops this furthest, arguing the angels' charge is creational (takwīnī), not legislative, citing "honoured servants who precede Him not in speech" (21:26–27).
No excuses — then repentance. On v. 7, al-Ṭabarsī, al-Ṭūsī and al-Mīzān agree that "make no excuses today" is addressed to the disbelievers because an excuse is a form of repentance, and repentance is impossible once the Fire is entered. (Al-Qummī and al-Burhān are silent on v. 7 — the digital source explicitly notes the verse has no tafsīr in them — so nothing is supplied.) The pivot of the passage is tawba naṣūḥ, on which the sources are richest. The famous ḥadīth of Muʿādh b. Jabal — "repent and never return, as milk does not return to the udder" — is given by al-Ṭabarsī and al-Mīzān; al-Qummī and al-Burhān carry al-Ṣādiq's terse "the servant repents and does not return," with the beloved-of-God being al-maftūn al-tawwāb (the oft-tried penitent). Al-Burhān preserves the tender narration that God, loving the sincere penitent, makes his recording angels, his own limbs, and the very ground forget his sins, so that he meets God with nothing to testify against him; and Ibn Bābawayh's definitions ("that the inward be like the outward, and better"). Al-Ṭabarsī gathers a spectrum of glosses, including the etymology of naṣūḥ from stitching — disobedience rends the religion, repentance patches it.
The light that runs ahead. On "their light running before them and on their right," al-Mīzān suggests the light before them is the light of faith and the light on their right the light of deeds, and reads "those who believed with him" as inseparable companions of the Prophet on that Day. The Shīʿī sources give this an imamological key: al-Qummī, al-Burhān and al-Mīzān all cite Ṣāliḥ b. Sahl from al-Ṣādiq — "the Imāms of the believers run before them and on their right until they settle them in the dwellings of the Garden" — and al-Bāqir's "whoever has light that Day is saved, and every believer has light," al-Burhān expanding into the imagery of the crossing of the Path and the seven gifts promised to the Prophet's Shīʿa.