Sūrah 99 · Āyāt 6–8

Issuing forth, scattered. Yawmaʾidhin yaṣduru l-nāsu ashtātan yields a fine divergence among the sources. al-Mīzān (al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī) takes ṣudūr in its root sense — the camels' turning back from the water after drinking — and so reads it as the people departing the Standing, after the Reckoning, to their stations in the Garden and the Fire, the felicitous distinguished from the wretched; Majmaʿ al-Bayān (al-Ṭabarsī) and al-Tibyān (al-Ṭūsī) agree it is the return from the place of presentation, the people of each faith apart (compare 30:14, 30:43). The published Enlightening Commentary (Imani), by contrast, glosses yaṣdur as camels “excitingly coming out of the watering place,” i.e. the dead coming out of their graves to the reckoning — a reading al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī records as the alternative but rates “nearer” to leave with the departure-to-stations sense. Ashtāt, all agree, means scattered and diverse — by religion, by black and white faces, by terror and security. Tafsīr al-Qummī and al-Burhān (al-Baḥrānī) specify the scattering as “believers, disbelievers and hypocrites,” and gloss “to be shown their deeds” as “they halt over what they did.”

Seeing the deed itself. On li-yuraw aʿmālahum, the sources offer the recompense of deeds (Ibn ʿAbbās, in al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī), the reading of the record (18:49), the heart's knowledge, or — al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī's preference, shared by the Enlightening Commentary — the literal embodiment of deeds (tajassum al-aʿmāl), the act itself made present. al-Ṭūsī adds the sobering note that the disbeliever sees his good deeds and grieves, for they are nullified, while the believer sees his evil expiated.

An atom's weight. Mithqāla dharratin is defined identically across the sources: al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī glosses dharra as the motes seen in a sunbeam, and also small ants; the Enlightening Commentary notes the same and that modern Arabic uses dharra for the “atom.” The point all draw is the absolute precision of the divine accounting — not the smallest good or evil escapes it (the Enlightening Commentary links 31:16, the mustard-seed in the rock).

No deed wasted — and the problem of iḥbāṭ. al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī both adduce these verses to refute nullification (iḥbāṭ): the plain generality shows every act is requited, so a “nullified” deed (which by definition is not requited) cannot be the whole story; yet both add that the verse is specified — repentance and pardon remain. al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī answers the same tension differently: the verses on ḥabṭ, on the transfer of merits between souls, and on evil turned to good for penitents govern these two — whoever's good is nullified is judged “not to have done good,” so he has none left to see. The Enlightening Commentary treats cancellation, forgiveness and repentance as exceptions to a general rule, or as a final “balance” in which, seeing the remainder, one has in truth seen all.

The most decisive verses. al-Ṭabarsī and the Enlightening Commentary close on Ibn Masʿūd's judgment that these are the aḥkam (most decisive) verses of the Qurʾān — the Prophet called the passage “the Comprehensive” — with the report of the man who learned only Sūrat al-Zalzala and was sent away “a scholar.” al-Burhān and al-Qummī read vv.7–8 as a refutation of the Mujbira (determinists) who deny human agency, and carry Abū al-Jārūd's narration from al-Bāqir on the fate of the atom-weight of good done for other than God and the atom-weight of evil forgiven the people of the Garden; al-Mīzān's narrative section adds the traditions of Anas and Shaddād b. Aws to the same end.