أَتَى

2:215; 40:52.

6:116.

Commentary:

In this verse God, lovingly addresses the Holy Prophet with words of comfort and solace, as if saying: "We know that thou art indeed pained to see people denying God, but the law of God cannot be changed. We never compel men to become believers." The words, There is none that can change the words of Allah, refer to this very law of God, which is unalterable. The law is twofold: firstly, that whenever a Prophet of God appears, there are always men who deny and oppose him; secondly, that God never compels such men to accept the truth. See 2:257; 3:21; 36:31.

6:48; 12:108; 43:67.

Commentary:

The word "Hour" refers to the Hour of the decisive victory of Islam, or, in other words, the Fall of Mecca. Thus, whereas "punishment" refers to ordinary afflictions, "Hour" refers to the final and decisive event of the struggle. The question put in this verse is answered in the next.

6:41; 10:51; 12:108; 43:67.

Commentary:

The word "suddenly" signifies the coming of the Divine punishment without warning or previous indication. The Fall of Mecca belonged to this class of signs.

The word "openly" implies giving a warning beforehand so that such people as still retain inward light and have a desire to follow the guidance may become warned and may accept the truth without further delay, lest they should also perish along with the wrongdoers.

18:46.

3:118.

11:69.

Important Words:

حصیدا (a field that is mown down) is derived from حصد meaning, he reaped or cut with the scythe seed-produce or plants or herbage. They say حصدھم بالسیف i.e. he mowed them down with the sword; he slew them; he exerted his utmost power or exceeded ordinary bounds in slaying them; he exterminated them with the sword. The Arab proverb من زرع الشر حصد الندامةmeans, he who sows evil reaps regret. حصید means, reaped seed-produce; grain that is reaped; seed-produce torn up and carried away by the wind; slain or mown down with the sword, like seed-produce when reaped. حصاد means, time or season of reaping; what remains on the ground after the crop has been reaped; what falls off and becomes scattered of the seed-produce (Lane & Aqrab).

Commentary:

The life of this world has been likened here to rainwater. The verse purports to say that when rain descends from heaven, it causes various kinds of vegetation to grow. Some of them are useful for man and others for animals. But man, instead of ascribing this to the favour of God, looks upon it as the fruit of his own industry and skill. When, however, in consequence of his pride and vanity, a sudden visitation from God destroys all the produce of the earth, he cannot prevent or delay its destruction, let alone possess the power to produce it which he so vaingloriously claimed to have. The moral of the parable is that when nations become proud and vain, i.e. when they take life lightly, their decline sets in and they come to grief.

Water in this verse may also be taken to stand for the word of God. In this sense, the verse would mean that the word of God brings about mighty changes in the life of those who accept and follow it and various new sciences come into existence as a result of its study and new discoveries are made in the material as well as in the spiritual world. The revelation of the Quran gave birth not only to highly spiritual and righteous men but also to eminent philosophers and scientists. But when Muslims became vain and refused to acknowledge their debt to the word of God and began to look upon themselves as the real originators and creators of all these sciences, they fell from the high pedestal of material and spiritual glory to the depths of degradation and degeneration.

6:48; 7:98-99.

Important Words:

ارءیتم (Tell me) means, have you considered; or tell me you; or simply, tell me( Lane).

Commentary:

The words, by night or by day, contain a subtle allusion to the destruction of the people of Mecca, on whom punishment was to come both during the day and at night. At the Battle of Badr, which was the first pitched battle fought between Muslims and Meccans and in which the foundations were laid of the latter’s complete destruction, they had a foretaste of their ruin "by day" while at the Battle of the Ditch, which was the last real trial of strength between the two parties, the circumstances which caused their ruin were brought into existence "by night." The punishment which was to overtake the Meccans by night has been mentioned here before that which was to overtake them by day, because the former was to deal to them a blow which was to end their power for all time.

The verse also constitutes a rebuke to disbelievers that they should not indulge in futile discussion as to the time and form of the promised punishment but should try to escape it by effecting a change in their lives.

5:53.

Commentary:

The word 'decree' may refer either (1) to the punishment with which disbelievers were threatened in the previous chapter in the words, the hour is sure to come (15:86), or (2) to the promise contained in the words, lower thy wing of mercy for the believers (15:89). The words, the decree of Allah is coming, mean to say (1) that the time of punishment for disbelievers or (2) the time of the ushering in of the new order, has arrived.

The words, so seek ye not to hasten it, refer to both the aforesaid claims: (1) Disbelievers are told not to be in a hurry to demand punishment, for the time of punishment had already drawn near. (2) Believers are told not to be impatient for the new order which is already at their very doors.

At the end of the previous Surah, the Holy Prophet and the believers were asked to shun disbelievers and give up further reasoning with them (15:86), and confine themselves to the glorification of God (15:99). Now by the words, Holy is He, it is announced that the time has come when the Sanctity and Holiness of God will be established. The Prophet possesses no material resources and has no means while disbelievers possess all sorts of means and resources. So the fact that the Prophet, notwithstanding his weakness and resourcelessness, will have power and dominion over his enemies will constitute clear evidence of the Holiness of God.

The words, The decree of Allah is coming, fulfil the prophecy of punishment implied in the words, the hour is sure to come (15:86), while the words, Holy is He, fulfil the prophecy embodied in the words, glorify thy Lord praising Him(15:99). This beautiful order and continuity of themes disposes of the ignorant criticism that there is no order or arrangement in the Quran.

The words, Exalted above all that which they associate with Him, signify that the associate-gods of disbelievers can never frustrate God’s plans or interfere with His decrees and decisions.

This loud proclamation of the Unity of God and His freedom from associates or partners constitutes a very cogent proof of the Divinesource of the Quran. False claimants always seek to form a powerful party of their supporters, and if they fail to do so, attribute the failure of their mission to this fact. But the True and All-Powerful God proclaims His Oneness as well as His independence of all partisans, associates or supporters.

39:26; 59:3.

Commentary:

The verse purports to say that it was nothing new on the part of the leaders of disbelief in the time of the Holy Prophet to deceive their followers and thus to keep them ignorant of the true teachings of Islam. The same device was adopted by the opponents of former Prophets. But their machinations were never attended with success; rather they recoiled upon their authors.

The verse also implies an effective retort to the opponents of the Holy Prophet. They say that he merely repeats what was said by other Prophets before him. To this objection the verse retorts that the Holy Prophet’s disbelievers, too, are only copying and imitating what was said and done by the opponents of previous Prophets. Only they have chosen the wrong side, and have imitated the party which met its ruin.

It was not an ordinary ruin which overtook the opponents of past Prophets. They were destroyed root and branch. The very foundations of the edifices they had erected and the walls and the roofs thereof tumbled down upon them, that is to say, neither the leaders nor their followers escaped. So the leaders of disbelief are warned that they should not be proud of their following, because when the time came for Divine punishment, all their power and influence would be of no avail to them and their whole organization with all its firmly founded institutions would fall to pieces. So it actually came to pass on the Fall of Mecca.

The verse also adds that Divine destruction always comes in forms and from quarters most unexpected. The expression "coming of God" means the coming of Divine punishment. See also 13:42.

19:52; 79:16.

Commentary:

موسی (Moses), the founder of Judaism, lived about 1400 years before Jesus. He was a Law-giving Prophet and the founder of a great religious system. As for the name Moses, it may be briefly stated that موسی (Moses) is really a Hebrew name having definite derivation in both Hebrew and Arabic. In Hebrew it is pronounced and written as موشی (Moshe) and means, "a thing drawn out of water" or "saved from water" (Enc. Bib.). See also 2:54.

Against all accepted canons of history Freud in his "Moses and Monotheism" has adumbrated quite a novel theory that Moses was not an Israelite and did not belong to the Hebrew stock and also that the Israelites never settled in Egypt. He has advanced the following arguments in support of this strange and baseless claim:

1. That Moses is an Egyptian name.

2. That the idea of the Oneness of God is originally Egyptian, having been first conceived and adopted by an ancient Egyptian king, named Ikhnaten (or Akhenaten). Moses himself being an Egyptian borrowed it from the Egyptians and preached it among the Israelites.

3. That, being an Egyptian, Moses popularized the Egyptian custom of circumcision as a religious rite among the Israelites.

4. That like the teaching of the Egyptian king, Akhenaten, there is no mention of the life after death in the teachings of Moses which also shows that he was an Egyptian.

5. That the Egyptians had a very strong dislike for swine and its flesh and that the Israelites developed this dislike as a result of the teaching of Moses.

6. That because Moses was an Egyptian he could not properly express himself in Hebrew.

1. Firstly, all these arguments in fact possess no basis. As stated above and also in 2:54, Moses is certainly a Hebrew word, having derivation both in Hebrew and Arabic. But even if we admit that the name Moses was of Egyptian origin, it does not follow that the man Moses also was an Egyptian. As the Israelites were a subject race in Egypt, living under the rule of the Pharaohs, it seems quite plausible that they should have adopted Egyptian names. The members of a subject race generally feel a particular delight in adopting the names and imitating the customs, modes of living and dress etc., of their rulers. But the actual fact is that موسی (Moses) is a Hebrew name and Pharaoh’s daughter, who very probably gave him that name, must have certainly been influenced to give the child a Hebrew name, as having taken him out of water she thought that he belonged to the Israelite people. It is also possible that the name might have been suggested by Moses’ mother or sister.

2. The second argument that the idea of the Oneness of God was originally Egyptian, having been first conceived and adopted by Akhenaten, an ancient Egyptian king, and preached by him among the Israelites, is equally wrong. In the first place it is manifestly unreasonable to suppose that a certain concept is the monopoly of one people. Different peoples may independently form similar ideas without having borrowed them from one another. Secondly, even supposing that the idea of God’s Unity is of Egyptian origin, the inference cannot be justified that Moses was an Egyptian. If an American or a German can borrow an idea from an Englishman and vice versa why cannot an Israelite borrow an idea from an Egyptian? The truth is that the idea of God’s Oneness was neither conceived by Egyptians nor by Syrians or any other people. It has its origin in Divine revelation.

3. The contention that circumcision was an old Egyptian practice and Moses being an Egyptian borrowed it from his people and popularized it among the Israelites also possesses no substance. Supposing that the practice of circumcision was Egyptian, how does this fact show that Moses was an Egyptian? Do not one people adopt the customs of another people? Could not the Israelites, during their stay in Egypt, have borrowed this practice from the Egyptians, particularly in view of the fact that the Israelites were a subject race and the subject race have a special liking for the ideas and practices of their rulers. In any case it is not a fact that the practice of circumcision was in vogue among the Egyptians alone. According to the Bible, in pursuance of God’s command, Abraham had himself and his two sons Ishmael and Isaac circumcised and had made the observance of the rite of circumcision incumbent upon his posterity long before Moses was born (Gen. 17:11). This practice was also in vogue among the Arabs who never had good social relations with the Israelites and never had gone to Egypt. Even among the wild tribes of Africa and the aborigines of Australia circumcision is not unknown (Jew. Enc. vol. 4, p. 97 and "Tribes of Central Australia" by Spencer and Gillen, p.323). The earliest traces of this practice among Egyptians are to be found in the 16th century B.C. (Jew. Enc. vol.4, p.97), when the Israelites had already been living there. It can, therefore, be safely inferred that, if at all, the practice was borrowed by the Egyptians from the Israelites and not by the Israelites from the Egyptians. The practice seems to have been introduced into Egypt by the Prophet Joseph who commanded great respect and prestige with Egyptian monarchs. Under his influence it must have become popular among the upper strata of Egyptian society as research scholars are of the view that this practice was much more in vogue among the upper sections of the Egyptian people to which Joseph himself belonged than among the poor classes.

4. Another argument that has been advanced in favour of Moses being an Egyptian is that like the teaching of Akhenaten no reference is to be found in the teachings of Moses about life after death. That this argument is quite weak and flimsy is clear from the fact that Akhenaten has left no book, no teaching and no community of followers from whom his views about life after death might be ascertained. Moreover, there are references to life after death in the teaching of Moses. The Bible says: "And die in the mount whither thou goest up, and be gathered unto thy people; as Aaron thy brother died in mount Hor, and was gathered unto his people" (Deut. 32:50) and "I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness" (Psalms 17: 15). The misconception may have arisen from the absence of any marked emphasis on life after death in the Old Testament. This lack of stress might have been due to the fact that in the course of time the Old Testament had become subject to much interpolation and had been tampered with and many parts of it had been lost during the miseries and misfortunes that overtook the Israelites in the period of their dispersion and captivity. When, however, the Jewish scholars and savants re-edited the Bible, they left out from it those passages which did not quite suit the Jewish temper and genius. The passages dealing with the subject of life after death seem to have been among the parts left out as the Jews, being a particularly worldly-minded people, did not relish its repeated mention.

5. The fifth argument given in support of this thesis is that the Israelites, like the Egyptians, had an extreme dislike for pork. This argument, too, seems to stand on a flimsy ground. Though Egyptians did not like pork, pigs were kept and reared in Egypt and were even offered as sacrifice at the altars of the Egyptian gods (Enc. Bib. cols. 4825, 4826). Thus the reason for the Egyptians to refrain from slaughtering pigs seems to have been that they considered it a sacred animal unlike the Israelites to whom its eating was forbidden on account of its being filthy and abominable.

6. The sixth argument given in favour of Moses being an Egyptian is that he could not properly speak Hebrew, the language of the Israelites. This argument is based on Exod. 4:10 where it is stated that Moses was not eloquent and was slow of speech and of a slow tongue. It is true that Moses suffered from an impediment in his speech and could not freely express himself. But how could the fact that Moses was not fluent and was slow of speech prove that he was slow of speech in Hebrew and therefore was not an Israelite. On the contrary, as it appears from the Bible and the Quran, when commanded by God to go to Pharaoh to preach his mission to him, Moses requested to be excused on the plea of his inability to express himself adequately. This fact, if anything, shows that Moses could not freely talk in the tongue which Pharaoh spoke and understood i.e. the Egyptian tongue, and therefore he was not an Egyptian.

In short, there is no reason or justification for supposing that the name Moses is of Egyptian origin or that the man Moses was not an Israelite. The linguistic evidence of Hebrew and Arabic, combined with reason and the evidence of Jewish history and tradition, added to the account of Moses as given in the Bible and the Quran, all go to substantiate and support the fact that Moses was not an Egyptian nor was his name of Egyptian origin.

27:9; 28:31; 79:17.

Commentary:

The expression جمع کیدہ besides the meaning given in the text may also mean: He mustered all his designs; he contrived all sorts of plans; he did all that he could do.