3. Aal-i-Imraan

When some red velvet cloth went missing on the Day of Badr and some people began to say, ‘Perhaps the Prophet took it’, the following was revealed: It is not for a prophet to be fraudulent (an yaghulla, a variant reading has the passive an yughalla, meaning to attribute ghulūl, ‘fraud’, to him), to be treacherous with regard to the spoils, so do not presume this of him; whoever defrauds shall bring what he has defrauded on the Day of Resurrection, carrying it around his neck; then every soul, the fraudulent and the otherwise, shall be paid in full, the requital of, what it has earned, [what] it has done, and they shall not be wronged, a single thing.

Is he who follows God’s beatitude, being obedient and not defrauding, like him who is laden, [one who] returns, with God’s anger, because of his disobedience and fraud, whose abode is Hell? An evil journey’s end, a resort, it is!

No! They are of degrees, that is, individuals of [different] degrees, before God, that is, belonging to varying stations: for those that follow His beatitude, a reward, and for those that are laden with God’s anger, punishment; and God sees what they do, and will requite them for it.

Truly God was gracious to the believers when He sent to them a messenger from among their own, that is to say, an Arab like them, not an angel or a non-Arab, so that they can understand what he says and feel honoured thereby, to recite to them His verses, the Qur’ān, and to purify them, to cleanse them of sins, and to teach them the Book, the Qur’ān, wisdom, the Sunna, though (in, is softened [in place of inna], that is, innahum, ‘though they…’) before, that is, before he was sent, they were in clear error.

And why, when distress befell you, at Uhud, when seventy of you were slain, and you had afflicted twice the like of it, at Badr, slaying seventy of them and taking another seventy captive, did you say, in amazement, ‘How is this?’, that is, how did this defeat happen to us when we are Muslims and God’s Messenger is among us (the last statement [annā hādhā, ‘how is this?’] constitutes [the locus of] the interrogative of denial). Say, to them: ‘It is from yourselves, because you abandoned your [battle] stations and were thus defeated. Surely God has power over everything’, including [the giving of] assistance and the withholding of it, and He requited you for your disputing [the Prophet’s command].

And what afflicted you, the day the two hosts encountered, at Uhud, was by God’s leave, by His will, and that He might know, through knowledge manifested outwardly, the, true, believers.

And that He might also know the hypocrites, and those who, when it was said to them, after they had fled the fighting, namely, ‘Abd Allāh b. Ubayy and his companions: ‘Come now, fight in the way of God, His enemies, or defend’, us against the enemy by increasing the multitude [of our fighters], if you are not going to fight; they said, ‘If we knew how, [if] we were skilled enough, to fight we would follow you’. God then said, showing them to be liars: They that day were nearer to unbelief than to belief, for what they manifested of their forsaking the believers, whereas before they had been outwardly nearer to belief; saying with their mouths that which was not in their hearts, for even if they had known how to fight they would not have followed you. And God knows best what they hide, of hypocrisy.

Those who (alladhīna substitutes for the previous alladhīna, or constitutes an adjectival qualification [of it]) said to their brothers, in religion, whilst they themselves, had, stayed put, [refraining] from [joining] the struggle, ‘Had they, the martyrs at Uhud or those who stayed put with us, obeyed us, they would not have been slain’. Say, to them: ‘Then avert, ward off, death from yourselves, if you speak the truth’, in that staying put delivers one from it [sc. from death].

The following was revealed regarding martyrs: Count not those who were slain (read qutilū or quttilū) in God’s way, that is, for the sake of His religion, as dead, but rather, that they are, living with their Lord, their spirits inside green birds that take wing freely wherever they wish in Paradise, as reported in a hadīth); provided for [by Him], with the fruits of Paradise.

Rejoicing (farihīna, a circumstantial qualifier referring to the person governing yurzaqūn, ‘sustained’) in what God has given them of His bounty, and, they are, rejoicing, joyful, for the sake of those who have not joined them but are left behind, from among their believing brothers (allādhīna, ‘those who’, may be substituted by [what follows, sc. ‘rejoicing…that no fear’]): that no fear shall befall them, those that have not yet joined them, neither shall they grieve, in the Hereafter, meaning, they rejoice for their [brothers’ future] security and felicity (allā [of allā khawfun] is an-lā, meaning, bi-an lā).