Sūrat al-Wāqiʿa · Āyāt 75–96

What the passage says

The surah turns to a solemn oath: (v.75) "I swear by the places where the stars set" — and (v.76) "indeed it is a great oath, did you but know." The scholars read the particle lā not as a real negation but as emphasis: in plain terms, I do swear. What follows is the thing being sworn to.

(v.77–78) "This is indeed a noble Qurʾān, in a guarded Book" — a Qurʾān that is honored, and whose source is preserved beyond any tampering, identified with the Preserved Tablet. (v.79) "No one touches it except the pure ones" — the verse that the scholars dwell on most, taken to speak of who may handle the Book and, at a deeper level, who can truly grasp it. (v.80) It is "sent down gradually from the Lord of all the worlds."

(v.81–82) The tone sharpens into rebuke: "Do you take lightly this discourse, and make your denial of it your vocation?" — you treat the very Qurʾān that should be your provision, or the thanks you owe for it, as something to reject.

(v.83–87) Then the dying moment, offered as a proof: "when it reaches the throat" — the soul of the dying — "and at that moment you are looking on, and We are nearer to him than you are, though you do not perceive." The challenge follows: "then why do you not restore it, if you are not subject [to a reckoning], if you are truthful?" If, as you claim, there is no decree and no reckoning, send the soul back. You cannot — and that helplessness is the argument.

(v.88–94) The surah closes on the three classes a person belongs to at death. The brought-near (v.88) receive "ease, abundance, and a garden of bliss" (v.89). The People of the Right Hand (v.90) are met with "Peace be on you, from the People of the Right Hand" (v.91). The denying, straying ones (v.92) get "a treat of boiling water" (v.93) and "entry into hell" (v.94).

(v.95–96) "Indeed this is certain truth. So celebrate the Name of your Lord, the All-supreme!"

Convergence — where the six agree

• The oath is emphatic, not a denial. All six read lā uqsimu as "I do swear," following Saʿīd b. Jubayr. Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, the Enlightening Commentary, and al-Mīzān note that some allow lā first as a brushing-aside of what the deniers say before the oath is renewed, but the emphatic sense is treated as primary.

• "The settings of the stars" is read several ways. Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī list the stars' risings and settings (Mujāhid, Qatāda), their scattering at the Resurrection (al-Ḥasan), the pre-Islamic star-lore of the anwāʾ, and the staged descent of the Qurʾān itself in installments (Ibn ʿAbbās). Ṭabarsī and al-Baḥrānī both transmit from Imams al-Bāqir and al-Ṣādiq that these "settings" are the stars used as missiles against the devils, which the pagans swore by — so God says He does not swear by them. Ṭabāṭabāʾī treats the literal "stations of the stars" as foremost to the mind; the Enlightening Commentary develops this into the orbits and resting-places of the stars.

• The noble, guarded Qurʾān and who may touch it. All six agree the oath's response is "a noble Qurʾān, in a guarded Book," the guarded Book being the Preserved Tablet. On "none touches it but the purified," Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, and the Enlightening Commentary foreground the legal ruling — narrated from al-Bāqir, al-Ṣādiq, and (in al-Burhān) al-Hādī/al-Riḍā — that the one in major or minor ritual impurity may not touch the Qurʾān's script. All six also note the reading that "the purified" are the angels, or those purified of sin. The Enlightening Commentary and al-Mīzān add a spiritual layer: "touch" as true comprehension, reached only by the inwardly pure.

• "Your livelihood / your thanks." All six preserve ʿAlī's recitation wa-tajʿalūna shukrakum ("you make your thanks that you deny"), tied to the occasion of people attributing rain to a star rather than to God. Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, al-Qummī, al-Baḥrānī, and al-Mīzān all carry both readings — rizqakum (your provision) and shukrakum (your thanks) — and the same rain-occasion.

• The dying moment is the proof, and the three final destinies are fixed. All six read the soul reaching the throat and the challenge to "restore it" as the climax of the argument against the deniers: your inability to return the soul shows death is God's decree. On v.85, Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, the Enlightening Commentary, and al-Mīzān gloss "nearer" as God's encompassing knowledge and power (and His soul-seizing messengers). And all six give the same three outcomes: the brought-near to rest (rawḥ) and fragrance/provision (rayḥān) and a garden; the People of the Right to "Peace to you"; the deniers to scalding water (ḥamīm) and the blaze of Hell (jaḥīm).

Divergence — where they differ

• The biggest split is literal versus esoteric reading of the three classes. Most of the surface meaning is shared, but al-Qummī and al-Baḥrānī carry an explicitly Imāmī taʾwīl the others do not assert: al-Qummī reads the People of the Right as the companions of the Commander of the Faithful, the greeting of peace as addressed to the Prophet "that they not be punished," and the deniers as the enemies of the Family of Muhammad. al-Baḥrānī gathers the densest set of such narrations — the oath read (from al-Ṣādiq) as a swearing by the Imams; Sharaf al-Dīn al-Najafī's inner reading in which the dying man "looks on" to ʿAlī, who gives his friend tidings of Paradise; the Covenant report that ʿAlī is the one by whom God argued with creation, so the People of the Right are those who accepted; the grave-questioning by Munkar and Nakīr; and "the People of the Right are your Shīʿa, your offspring kept safe from them."

• What "purified" includes. Ṭabāṭabāʾī uniquely argues that restricting "the purified" to the angels (as most exegetes do) is "a restriction without a restrictor," and reads it as all whom God has purified — angels and the purified among mankind, citing the Purification verse (33:33) for the Ahl al-Bayt. The Enlightening Commentary, by contrast, presents the three readings (angels, the ritually pure, the spiritually pure) as non-exclusive and equally tenable.

• Where the destinies are located. al-Qummī and al-Baḥrānī (citing al-Ṣādiq) distribute each fate across two moments — rawḥ/rayḥān (or ḥamīm) "in the grave," the garden (or jaḥīm) "in the Hereafter." The Enlightening Commentary echoes this two-stage scheme; al-Mīzān reads the classes more directly as their states at and after death without insisting on the grave/Hereafter division.

• Single-source additions. Ṭūsī alone stresses the legal point that one may swear only by God, while God may swear by whatever of His creation He wills. al-Mīzān alone analyzes why "denial" is placed before "straying" here, the reverse of verse 51, reading it as a sign that their torment is the fruit of denial, not mere error. The Enlightening Commentary alone brings the astronomical register — a galaxy's roughly "one thousand million stars," the precision of orbits as "one of the scientific miracles" — and closes with a personal supplication. Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī both record that verse 96 became the bowing formula subḥāna rabbiya al-ʿaẓīm.

Each scholar's full text is in the source panels below.