Sūrah 82 · Āyāt 6–12

The passage (82:6-12). The cosmic prologue gives way to a direct, wounding address: "O man, what has deluded you about your generous Lord, who created you, proportioned you and balanced you, and composed you in whatever form He willed?" Then the diagnosis — "No! Rather you deny the Recompense" — and the reminder that records the case: "indeed over you are keepers, noble writers, who know whatever you do."

What deluded you about the Generous One. The sources read the question as reproach, not inquiry. Al-Tabarsi and al-Tusi both gloss gharraka as delusion that falsely imagines safety from the dreaded thing, and al-Tabarsi carries the Prophet's terse answer — "his ignorance deluded him" — which the Enlightening Commentary and al-Mizan echo. The naming of the Lord as al-Karim is the crux. Al-Tabarsi gathers four classical glosses (pure benefactor; giver of what is and is not due; accepter of little who gives much; the One who exchanges misdeeds for good deeds) and the famous ascetic ripostes to the verse — al-Fudayl's "Your drawn-down veils deluded me," Yahya ibn Mu'adh's "Your kindness, past and present," Abu Bakr al-Warraq's "the generosity of the Generous." Al-Mizan pointedly refuses that consolation: since the context is one of threat, "Generous" is not a prompt for an excuse; man may not plead "Your generosity deluded me," for God has warned (14:7) that ingratitude meets severe punishment. The Enlightening Commentary aligns with this, quoting 'Ali's long admonition ("what has emboldened you to sin... is there no cure for your ailment?").

Created, proportioned, balanced, composed. On khalaqaka fa-sawwaka fa-'adalaka, the philology is shared: al-Tabarsi and al-Tusi both register the two readings of 'adalaka (doubled = "set your creation right in fairest stature"; light = "balanced part with part"), my web check confirming the mainstream sense "fashioned then balanced/proportioned you." Al-Mizan turns it into a physiology of mutually compensating organs — what one limb is too weak for, another supplies — all terminating in "the governance of the Generous Lord, man having no hand in it." On fi ayyi suratin ma sha'a rakkabaka, al-Tabarsi, al-Tusi and al-Qummi (directly, and via al-Burhan from al-Sadiq) preserve the same gloss: "Had He willed, He would have composed you in other than this form" — and al-Tabarsi adds Mujahid's "in the likeness of father, mother, or uncle."

The denial and the scribes. All sources read kalla bal tukadhdhibun bi'l-din as the true root of man's heedlessness: al-Tabarsi, al-Tusi and al-Mizan gloss al-din as the Recompense/requital, the Enlightening Commentary rejecting "Islam" as the meaning here since the theme is Resurrection. Against this plain reading stand the Imami sources: al-Qummi (and al-Burhan transmitting him) read the denied al-Din as the Messenger and 'Ali, and elsewhere as the wilaya itself ("al-Din is the wilaya"). On the hafizin kiraman katibin, the sources converge — angels who preserve and write every deed — al-Mizan distinctively reading "noble" (kiram) as their created infallibility and inferring from "they know what you do" that the scribes know intentions, since an act's moral value is only knowable through its intention. The Enlightening Commentary gathers the richest hadith on these angels (the sweet or fetid breath of intention, the seven-hour reprieve before an evil is recorded, the tenfold good).