Surah 7: Al-A'raf
The Holy Qur’an with English Translation and Commentary (Five Volume Commentary)
[a]In the name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful.[906]
[906] Commentary:
See under 1:1.
[a] See 1:1.
[b]Alif Lam Mim Sad.[906A]
[906A] Commentary:
According to Ibn ‘Abbas, the combined four letters المص are the abbreviations of the words انا الله اعلم وافصل i.e. "I am Allah, I know and I explain". The contents of this Surah justify this interpretation, because the Surah not only embodies Divine knowledge but "explains" at a greater length and with a greater wealth of illustrations the subject dealt with in the previous Surah. See also note on الم in 2:2.
[b] 2:2; 3:2; 29:2; 30:2; 31:2; 32:2.
[c]This is a Book revealed unto thee—so let there be no straitness in thy bosom concerning it—that thou mayest warn thereby, and that it be an exhortation to the believers.[907]
[907] Commentary:
This verse is addressed to each and every believer, and not particularly to the Holy Prophet. The believers are told that the Holy Qur’an is God’s own revelation and not the outcome of the Prophet’s mind, and since it is the revealed Word of the All-Knowing God, they should feel no straitness or hesitance in acting upon its injunctions and preaching them to others.
[c] 6:52; 19:98; 25:2.
[d]Follow that which has been sent down to you from your Lord, and follow no protectors other than Him. How little do you remember![908]
[908] Commentary:
No patronage or help from any quarter can be of avail to a people in opposition to God and His Messengers. This is a lesson writ large on the pages of history and is well worth remembering.
[d] 33:3; 39:56.
[a]How many a town have We destroyed! And Our punishment came upon it by night or while they slept at noon.[909]
[909] Important Words:
بیاتا (by night) is the noun-infinitive from بات i.e. he passed the night. بات یفعل کذا means, he did such a thing by or at night; or he passed the night doing such a thing; or he entered upon the night doing such a thing. اتاھم الامربیاتا means, the thing or event happened to them at night, or in the latter part of the night (Aqrab). See also 4:82.
قائلون (slept at noon) is derived from قال (of which the aorist is یقیل and not یقول) i.e. he slept or rested during mid-day; or he drank water, etc. at mid-day. So قائل means, one sleeping or resting during mid-day. قیلولة means, the act of sleeping or resting during mid-day. قائلة means, mid-day (Aqrab).
Commentary:
The particle فا in فجاءھا here means "and". If, however, it be taken to mean "then" and the words that follow be translated as "then Our punishment came upon them", then the verb اھلکنا (have We destroyed) will have to be rendered as "We had decreed to destroy". Two separate and distinct hours, viz. (1) the latter part of the night and (2) mid-day are here mentioned as the two times when divine visitations generally come upon men. These are the times when people are often in a state of sleep or negligence.
[a] 7:98; 21:12; 28:59.
So when Our punishment came upon them, their cry was nothing but this that they said: [b]‘We were indeed wrongdoers!’[910]
[910] Commentary:
The reason why even confirmed atheists have been found to cry to God for help when Divine punishment overtakes them, is that at such a dreadful time, man becomes not only conscious of his own utter helplessness but also of the might and power of a Higher Being.
[b] 21:15.
And [c]We will certainly question those to whom the Messengers were sent, and [d]We will certainly question the Messengers.[911]
[911] Commentary:
The verse embodies the important principle that in one way or another all are responsible to God. The people will be questioned as to how they received God’s Messengers, and the Messengers will be questioned as to how they delivered the Divine Message and what response the people gave them.
[c] 28:66.
[d] 5:110.
Then will We certainly relate to them their deeds with knowledge, for We were never absent.[912]
[912] Commentary:
God’s purpose in questioning the Messengers and the people (7:7 above) would not be to gain information or supplement His knowledge,––for He is All-Knowing—but, on the contrary, to impress upon both parties the extent and perfection of His own knowledge. After the people and the Prophets will have said what they will have to say, God Himself will tell them in detail what they did and what they should have done but failed to do, and thus the all-comprehensiveness of God’s knowledge will be fully brought home to them.
And [a]the weighing on that day will be true. Then as for those whose scales are heavy, it is they who shall prosper.[913]
[913] Important Words:
موازینه (whose scales). موازین is the plural of میزان which is derived from وزن. They say وزن الشیء i.e. he weighed the thing, or he determined or estimated the weight of the thing. وزن الشعر means, he composed verses according to the fixed measure. وزن الشیء (with different vowel point at the central root letter) means, the thing became heavy and weighty. وزن which is noun-infinitive means, the act of weighing; or the weight of a thing; or weightiness. وزن الرجل means, he was a person of weighty opinion. میزان means, a weighing instrument; a balance; a pair of scales; the weight of a thing; the measure of a verse (Lane & Aqrab).
Commentary:
The verse does not mean that pairs of scale will actually be set up and human actions and deeds weighed like material things. The language used is figurative. Material things are indeed weighed in scales made of metal or wood, but the weighing of things which are not material means determining their real value or worth or importance.
The verse also throws interesting side-light on the fact that on the Day of Reckoning it is only good works that will carry weight. In the following verse, the Holy Qur’an makes the point further clear by saying, those whose scales are light, (i.e. those who have no good works to their credit or who have only evil works which carry no weight), it is they who shall have ruined their souls.
[a] 21:48; 23:103; 101:9-10.
And as for those [a]whose scales are light, it is they who shall have ruined their souls because of their being unjust to Our Signs.[914]
[914] Commentary:
The words, whose scales are light, mean, those whose good deeds are few and evil deeds many. The word ظلم (rendered as being unjust to) literally means, to put a thing in the wrong place, and is here used to signify that the disbelievers did not treat the signs of God in the manner in which they should have been treated. They were meant to instil fear of God and humility in the minds of the people; but, on the contrary, disbelievers became all the more arrogant and insolent and received the signs of God with mockery and derision.
[a] 23:104; 101:9-10.
And [b]We have established you in the earth and provided for you therein the means of subsistence. How little thanks you give![915]
[915] Commentary:
The verse purports to tell the people that in spite of the fact that God has given them all necessary things, yet they are not grateful to Him. This is intended to warn men to be prepared to reap the fruits of their evil actions.
[b] 15:21; 46:27.
And We did create you and then [c]We gave you shape; then [d]said We to the angels, ‘Submit to Adam’; and they all submitted but Iblis did not; he would not be of those who submit.[916]
[916] Commentary:
The story of Adam has already been partly related in 2:31-40. Another part of the same story with some additional details is given here with a different purpose. In the former Surah, the narration was meant to show that God had been sending down revelation from the beginning of the world and so the revelation sent to the Holy Prophet of Islam was not an innovation. Here it is given to show that there have always been enemies of the Prophets of God and so the hostility of the people towards the Holy Prophet was, in fact, a sign of his truth. The story of Adam is incapable of being fully understood without our first being acquainted with the scene of its occurrence. Was Adam first placed in Paradise and was it in Paradise that the scene described in this and the following few verses was enacted? All doubts on this score are set at rest by the plain words of the Holy Qur’an, I am about to place a vicegerent in the earth (2:31). It was indeed in this very earth that the creation of Adam and all that followed it took place. The Bible as well as Zoroastrian and Hindu religious writings also lend support to this view. The Holy Prophet is reported to have described the Nile and the Euphrates as the two rivers of جنة (the garden); referring to the place where Adam lived (Muslim, ch. on Jannat); and the Hadith, too, places Adam in Mesopotamia which is watered by the waters of the Tigris and the Euphrates. It was, therefore, here that the garden of Adam was situated and all the different incidents mentioned about him in the Holy Qur’an also took place here; and if there be any incident which cannot be proved to have literally occurred on this earth, then that incident will have to be taken in a figurative sense.
Another fact worth remembering is that 2:31, according to which Adam was created on this earth, also tells us that he was not the first man to live on this planet, and that other men lived even before he was brought into existence. In 2:31 Adam has been called Khalifah which word, meaning a successor, shows that he had predecessors whom he succeeded. The verse under comment also clearly points to the same conclusion. Addressing the people, it says, And We did create you and then We gave you shape; then said We to the angels, Submit to Adam. The plural pronoun "you" in the clause, We did create you, having preceded the words containing the command to angels to submit to Adam, which is preceded by the conjunction "then" shows that it was after the creation of men, and not only Adam, that God ordered angels to submit to Adam and that, therefore, human beings were already living on this earth when angels received this command. It is, thus, wrong to conclude that the human race began with Adam, that its whole life is only a little more than 6,000 years and that the different races now living on this earth are all necessarily descended from Adam.
The aborigines of Australia or the Red Indians of America or the Negroes of Africa may not be the descendants of the Adam about whom the Holy Qur’an speaks in the verse under comment. See also 2:31.
As already pointed out, events which cannot be literally shown to have occurred on this earth must be regarded as having taken place in a figurative sense. That figurative language has actually been used in this narrative is clear from the following facts:
1. The angels were bidden to perform سجدة (falling prostrate before Adam) which is not permissible for any being other than God. So God could not command the angels to fall prostrate before Adam in the literal sense of the words. These words must, therefore, be taken only in the figurative sense, i.e. that of submitting and rendering every kind of help. This is why the Arabic expression اسجدوا has here been translated as "submit to", which is a perfectly correct rendering according to the figurative idiom of the Arabic language.
2. The command to fall prostrate before Adam was given to the angels only; but Iblis who is not an angel, is also apparently included in it; which proves this inclusion also to be a figurative one.
3. Iblis is represented in the Holy Qur’an as having been created from fire (7:13), and he is also described as being one of the جن (jinn), which signifies an invisible creation (18:51). So he must have been invisible to Adam who was in all respects like other human beings. But he is here represented as having appeared to Adam in a visible form and having talked to him face to face. This shows that the word شیطان (Satan) has been used in the following verses in a figurative sense, and that it does not refer to the Evil One which tempts men.
4. It is said that when Adam and his wife tasted of the forbidden tree, their nakedness became manifest to them. But we know of no tree on this earth the tasting of which has the property of making a person realize his nakedness. So we will have to take 'the tree' and 'the nakedness' also in a figurative sense.
5. We are told in 20:119 that when God placed Adam in the garden, He told him that he would not become naked therein. But in 7:23 we are told that he did, in fact, become naked. So one of the two statements will have to be taken figuratively.
The straight and simple meaning of the verse is only this: the angels are bidden to submit to Adam and to help him in his work. This commandment was given to the angels when Adam was made a Prophet. As one of the functions of the angels is to exhort men to do virtuous deeds, they were commanded to help Adam by instilling good ideas into the minds of men and exhorting them to accept Adam as a Messenger of God. The chief angel is Gabriel. Similarly, there are evil spirits whose chief is Iblis. The evil spirits make evil suggestions to men and incite them to disobey God. So, while the angels in obedience to God’s command submitted to Adam, Iblis, chief of the evil spirits, refused to submit to him and to help him in his work.
It should be remembered that the incident mentioned here is in no way connected with the first progenitor of the human race, who may be called the first Adam. It is only with the later Adam (who lived on this earth about 6,000 years ago and from whom Noah and Abraham and their posterity were directly descended) that the present story is connected. See also notes on 2:31 & 2:35.
[c] 23:15; 39:7; 40:65.
[d] 2:35; 15:30-31; 17:62; 18:51; 20:117; 38:73-75.