بِسْمِ ٱللَّهِ ٱلرَّحْمَٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ
In the name of Allah, the All-Beneficent, the All-Merciful
الٓمٓصٓ
Alif, Lam, Mim, Suad.
كِتَٰبٌ أُنزِلَ إِلَيْكَ فَلَا يَكُن فِى صَدْرِكَ حَرَجٌۭ مِّنْهُ لِتُنذِرَ بِهِۦ وَذِكْرَىٰ لِلْمُؤْمِنِينَ
[This is] a Book that has been sent down to you—so let there be no disquiet in your heart on its account that you may warn thereby—and as an admonition for the faithful.
ٱتَّبِعُوا۟ مَآ أُنزِلَ إِلَيْكُم مِّن رَّبِّكُمْ وَلَا تَتَّبِعُوا۟ مِن دُونِهِۦٓ أَوْلِيَآءَ ۗ قَلِيلًۭا مَّا تَذَكَّرُونَ
Follow what has been sent down to you from your Lord, and do not follow any masters besides Him. Little is the admonition that you take!
وَكَم مِّن قَرْيَةٍ أَهْلَكْنَٰهَا فَجَآءَهَا بَأْسُنَا بَيَٰتًا أَوْ هُمْ قَآئِلُونَ
How many a town We have destroyed! Our punishment came to it at night, or while they were taking a midday nap.
فَمَا كَانَ دَعْوَىٰهُمْ إِذْ جَآءَهُم بَأْسُنَآ إِلَّآ أَن قَالُوٓا۟ إِنَّا كُنَّا ظَٰلِمِينَ
Then their cry, when Our punishment overtook them, was only that they said, ‘We have indeed been wrongdoers!’
فَلَنَسْـَٔلَنَّ ٱلَّذِينَ أُرْسِلَ إِلَيْهِمْ وَلَنَسْـَٔلَنَّ ٱلْمُرْسَلِينَ
We will surely question those to whom the apostles were sent, and We will surely question the apostles.
فَلَنَقُصَّنَّ عَلَيْهِم بِعِلْمٍۢ ۖ وَمَا كُنَّا غَآئِبِينَ
Then We will surely recount to them with knowledge, for We had not been absent.
وَٱلْوَزْنُ يَوْمَئِذٍ ٱلْحَقُّ ۚ فَمَن ثَقُلَتْ مَوَٰزِينُهُۥ فَأُو۟لَٰٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلْمُفْلِحُونَ
The weighing [of deeds] on that Day is a truth. As for those whose deeds weigh heavy in the scales—it is they who are the felicitous.
وَمَنْ خَفَّتْ مَوَٰزِينُهُۥ فَأُو۟لَٰٓئِكَ ٱلَّذِينَ خَسِرُوٓا۟ أَنفُسَهُم بِمَا كَانُوا۟ بِـَٔايَٰتِنَا يَظْلِمُونَ
As for those whose deeds weigh light in the scales—it is they who have ruined their souls, because they used to wrong Our signs.
English translation: Ali Quli Qarai
The sūra opens with the disjoined letters al-Mīṣ and a command to the Prophet: "let there be no ḥaraj in your breast" on account of the Book sent down to him. al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī report the same three readings of ḥaraj — constriction at the burden of conveying (al-Ḥasan), doubt about the duty (Ibn ʿAbbās, Mujāhid, Qatāda), or distress at being belied (al-Farrāʾ) — al-Ṭabarsī adding the report that the Prophet feared the people would "crush his head like bread," and that the verse removed that fear. al-Mīzān (al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī) reads the indefinite "a Book" with its unnamed Sender as a double note of glorification, and frames the whole chapter as God's covenant with humankind to worship Him alone: thus "Follow what was sent down… and take no masters besides Him" is, in substance, a call to God's wilāya. The minority Imāmī reading sharpens this: al-Burhān and al-Qummī gloss "take no masters besides Him" as "other than Muḥammad," and al-Qummī, through ʿAlī's sermon in al-Burhān, calls following what comes from God "the great triumph, and in abandoning it the manifest error."
On the letters themselves, al-Ṭūsī prefers that they name the sūras, while al-Burhān and al-Qummī carry the esoteric narrations: al-Ṣādiq's "I am God, al-Muqtadir, al-Ṣādiq," and the long Ḥuyayy b. Akhṭab episode in which the abjad value of al-Mīṣ (161) is read against the fall of a dynasty — material the Imam himself caps by warning that the Book has a ẓāhir and a bāṭin, firm and ambiguous verses, so the computation is not its plain sense.
The destroyed towns (4–5) draw a single voice from every source: the punishment fell "by night or at the midday rest," the hours of heedless repose, and the people's only cry was confession — al-Ṭabarsī and the Enlightening Commentary both drawing the lesson that repentance at the sight of the punishment no longer avails. On the questioning of 6–7, al-Mīzān argues pointedly that the "two groups" are the nations and the prophets — not, as some said, the prophets and the angels — and that the questioning is reproach, not the seeking of information; al-Ṭūsī lays out the four senses of "questioning" in the language to reconcile this with "the guilty shall not be questioned," and draws his theological point from "We were not absent": God is not a body, for a body on the Throne would be absent from the lower earths.
The Scale (8–9) is the passage's summit, and here al-Mīzān gives its signature reading: wazn is not a tally of good against evil but the measuring of each deed against al-ḥaqq, the truth — a deed has weight to the degree it embodies reality, so good deeds are "heavy" because they are true and evil deeds weightless because they are vanity. He anchors this in al-Ṣādiq's reply to the atheist — "actions are descriptions, not objects… the Scale is [God's] justice" — and in ʿAlī's "good deeds weigh good and evil deeds alike." al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī survey the alternatives (justice itself; a literal two-panned balance weighing scrolls or forms; the manifestation of each person's worth), al-Ṭūsī judging "justice" the best. The Enlightening Commentary and al-Qummī add the Imāmī key: "the Prophets and their successors are the Scales" (Imam Ṣādiq), and to "wrong Our signs" is, for al-Qummī, to reject the Imams — so that the heaviness of a life is finally measured by its fidelity to the truth God set in His guides.