يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ لَا تُلْهِكُمْ أَمْوَٰلُكُمْ وَلَآ أَوْلَٰدُكُمْ عَن ذِكْرِ ٱللَّهِ ۚ وَمَن يَفْعَلْ ذَٰلِكَ فَأُو۟لَٰٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلْخَٰسِرُونَ
O you who have faith! Do not let your possessions and children distract you from the remembrance of Allah, and whoever does that—it is they who are the losers.
وَأَنفِقُوا۟ مِن مَّا رَزَقْنَٰكُم مِّن قَبْلِ أَن يَأْتِىَ أَحَدَكُمُ ٱلْمَوْتُ فَيَقُولَ رَبِّ لَوْلَآ أَخَّرْتَنِىٓ إِلَىٰٓ أَجَلٍۢ قَرِيبٍۢ فَأَصَّدَّقَ وَأَكُن مِّنَ ٱلصَّٰلِحِينَ
Spend out of what We have provided you before death comes to any of you, whereat he might say, ‘My Lord, why did You not respite me for a short time so that I could give charity and become one of the righteous!’
وَلَن يُؤَخِّرَ ٱللَّهُ نَفْسًا إِذَا جَآءَ أَجَلُهَا ۚ وَٱللَّهُ خَبِيرٌۢ بِمَا تَعْمَلُونَ
But Allah will never respite anyone when his time has come, and Allah is well aware of what you do.
English translation: Ali Quli Qarai
The sura pivots from the hypocrites to the believers, and every source reads the pivot as deliberate. Al-Mizan makes it explicit: this is 'a caution to the believers to avoid the very traits that breed hypocrisy' -- being diverted by wealth and children, and miserliness -- so that the closing address is the practical counterpart of the opening portrait. On v.9 the exegetes gloss 'remembrance of God' along a spectrum: al-Tabarsi offers the five daily prayers or, more broadly, all obedience and the disposition of gratitude, patience and contentment; al-Tusi lists praising and magnifying God, or all His obligations. Al-Mizan adds the sharp theology of loss: 'they forgot God, so He forgot them' -- the manifest khusran named at the verse's end. The Enlightening Commentary frames wealth and children as bounties that turn to affliction only through excessive love, citing Imam al-Baqir's image that two wolves among a flock harm it less than avarice harms a believer's faith.
On the command to spend before death (v.10), the sources share a striking exegetical move: the dying man's plea 'that I might give charity and be among the righteous' is read so that 'the righteous' points to the hajj. Al-Tabarsi, al-Bahrani and al-Qummi all carry this -- via Ibn 'Abbas (no one who withholds zakat or neglects an affordable hajj but begs to return at death) and via al-Sadiq and al-Qummi ('give charity' from sadaqa, 'be among the righteous' = 'that I might perform hajj'). Al-Tabarsi calls this the gravest verse in the Qur'an rebuking neglect of God's dues, while al-Tusi draws two theological corollaries: that the unlawful is no God-given 'provision,' and that the wish for a reprieve proves both that ability precedes the act and that God does not create the disbelief in them.
Verse 11 seals it: no soul is respited past its term. Al-Tabarsi and al-Tusi distinguish the absolute appointed term (fixed, undelayable) from the conditioned term (which may be shortened or extended by what God knows best); al-Tabarsi adds that had God known they would repent He would have granted delay -- but He knew they would not. Al-Qummi and al-Bahrani close with a resonant tradition from Imam al-Baqir tying the fixed term to Laylat al-Qadr: God keeps inscribed records, advancing and deferring as He wills, and on the Night of Ordainment sends down all that will be until the next such night -- and 'once He has sent it down and the Writing of the heavens has recorded it, that is what He does not defer.'