7. Al-A'raaf

And, mention, when We wrenched the mountain above them, We lifted it up [unearthing it] from its root, as if it were a canopy, and they thought, they were certain, that it was about to fall upon them, because of God’s threat to them that it would fall upon them if they refused to accept the rulings contained in the Torah, they had [initially] refused [to accept] them because of their being burdensome, but then accepted them, and We said to them: ‘Take firmly, seriously and earnestly, what We have given you, and remember what is in it, by acting in accordance with it, that you might be God-fearing’.

And, remember, when your Lord took from the Children of Adam, from their loins (min zuhūrihim, is an inclusive substitution for the preceding [clause: min banī Ādama, ‘from the Children of Adam’], with the same preposition [min, ‘from’]) their seed, by bringing forth one from the loins of the other, [all] from the loins of Adam, offspring after offspring, in the way that they multiply, [looking] like small ants at [the valley of] Na‘mān on the Day of ‘Arafa [because of their multitude]. God set up proofs of His Lordship for them and endowed them with [the faculty of] reason, and made them testify against themselves, saying, ‘Am I not your Lord?’ They said, ‘Yea, indeed, You are our Lord, we testify’, to this, and this [taking of] testimony is, lest they should say (in both instances, read third person [yaqūlū, ‘they say’] or second person [taqūlū, ‘you say’]) on the Day of Resurrection, ‘Truly, of this, Oneness of God, we were unaware’, not knowing it!

Or lest you should say, ‘It is merely that our fathers were idolaters before, that is, before our time, and we were descendants of theirs, and so we followed their example. Will You then destroy us, chastise us, for that which those who follow falsehood did?’, from among our forefathers, by [their] establishing idolatry? The meaning is: they cannot use such arguments when they have been made to testify before their very selves to God’s Oneness. To effect this reminder by the tongue of the bearer of the miracle [Muhammad (s)] equally serves [as a reminder] for every soul to remember this within itself.

And recite, O Muhammad (s), to them, that is, the Jews, the tidings, the tale, of him to whom We gave Our signs, but he cast them off, emerging in his disbelief in the same way that a snake emerges from its [shed] skin, he rebelled in disbelief, this was Bal‘am b. Bā‘ūrā’, a scholar from among the Children of Israel, who had been given some knowledge [of the Scriptures], and who was asked [by them] to invoke God against Moses. And when he did, the invocation turned against him and his tongue fell out onto his chest, and Satan pursued him, catching up with him and so he became his comrade, and he became of the perverse.

And had We willed, We would have raised him up, to the ranks of the scholars, thereby, by facilitating his way to [good] deeds; but he was disposed to, at peace [in], the earth — that is, this world — and inclined to it, and followed his whims, by calling [others] to them, and so We abased him. Therefore his likeness, his description, is as the likeness of a dog: if you attack it, by driving it away or curbing it, it lolls its tongue out, and if you leave it, it lolls its tongue out, and no other animal is like it in this way (both conditional sentences constitute a circumstantial qualifier, that is to say, it has its tongue lolling out despicably in all circumstances. The purpose here is to point out the similarity [between the one who follows his whims and a dog] in terms of condition and vileness, judging by the [contextualising] fā’ [of fa-mathaluhu, ‘therefore his likeness’], which relates what comes after it to what came before it in the way of ‘inclining towards this world and following whims’, and judging by God’s saying: That, likeness, is the likeness of those people who deny Our signs. So recount the tale, to the Jews, that they might reflect, upon it and so believe.

Evil as an example are the people, evil is the example of the people, who denied Our signs, and were wont to wrong themselves, through denial.

He whom God guides, he is guided, and he whom He sends astray — truly they are the losers.

And We have indeed urged unto Hell many of the jinn and mankind, having hearts wherewith they do not understand, the truth, and having eyes wherewith they do not perceive, the proofs of God’s power with a perception that entails reflection, and having ears wherewith they do not hear, the signs or the admonitions, in a way so as to reflect and take heed. These, they are like cattle, in their failure to understand, perceive or listen — nay, rather they are further astray, than cattle, because [at least] they [cattle] seek what is beneficial to them and stay away from what is harmful to them: these individuals, on the other hand, are proceeding towards the Fire, out of [sheer] obstinacy. These — they are the heedless.

And to God belong the, ninety nine, Most Beautiful Names — mentioned in hadīth — (al-husnā is the feminine for al-ahsan) so invoke, name, Him by them, and leave those who blaspheme His Names (yulhidūn, ‘they blaspheme’, from [fourth form] alhada or [first form] lahada, meaning ‘those who incline away from the truth’), by deriving from them names for their gods, as in the case of al-Lāt, from Allāh (‘God’), al-‘Uzzā, from al-‘Azīz (‘Mighty’), and Manāt, from al-Mannān (‘Lord of Favours’). They will be requited, in the Hereafter, the requital, for what they did — this was [revealed] before the command to fight [them].