8. Al-Anfaal

That, chastisement, is for what your hands have sent before you — He refers to this [their actions] exclusively with these [hands], because most actions are accomplished with them — and [know] that God is never unjust to His servants’, such that he would punish them for no sin.

The way of these people is, like the way of Pharaoh’s folk and those before them: they disbelieved in God’s signs and so God seized them, with chastisement, because of their sins (the sentence beginning with kafarū, ‘they disbelieved’, explains the previous one). Truly, God is strong, in what He wills, severe in retribution.

That, chastisement of the disbelievers, is because God would never change a grace that He had conferred on a people, substituting it with affliction, until they have changed that which is in themselves, [until] they have exchanged the grace conferred upon them for unbelief, in the way that the Meccan disbelievers exchanged their being ‘fed against hunger’, their being made ‘safe from fear’ [cf. Q. 106:4] and the sending of the Prophet (s) to them, for unbelief, [for] barring against the way of God and [for] fighting Muslims; and [know] that God is Hearing, Knowing.

The following was revealed regarding [Banū] Qurayza: Surely the worst of beasts in God’s sight are the ungrateful who will not believe,

those of them with whom you have made a pact, not to support the idolaters, and then break their pact every time, they conclude one, and they are not fearful, of God, in their treachery.

So if (fa-immā: here the letter nūn of the conditional particle in, ‘if’, has been assimilated with the extra mā) you come upon them, [if] you find them, anywhere in the war, [deal with them so as to] cause those, fighters, behind them to scatter, to disperse, by making an example of them and punishing them, so that they, the ones behind them, might remember, [that they might] take heed from their example.

And if you fear, from any folk, who have concluded a pact with you, some treachery, in a pact, through some indication that comes to you, then cast it back to them, dissolve their pact, with fairness (‘alā sawā’ is a circumstantial qualifier), that is to say, while you and they have equal knowledge that the pact has been broken, by your apprising them thereof, lest they accuse you of treachery. Truly God does not love the treacherous.

The following was revealed regarding those who escaped capture on the day of Badr: And do not, O Muhammad (s), let those who disbelieve suppose that they have outstripped, God, that is, [that] they have eluded Him: indeed they cannot escape, they cannot elude Him (a variant reading has wa-lā yahsabanna, ‘and do not let them suppose’, so that the first direct object is omitted, actually being [an implied] anfusahum, ‘themselves’ [sc. ‘and do not let them suppose themselves to have outstripped’]; and according to another [variant reading] anna is read [instead of inna] with an implicit lām [sc. ‘because they cannot escape’]).

Make ready for them, for fighting them, whatever force you can, the Prophet (s) said that this refers to ‘archers’, as reported by Muslim, and of horses tethered (ribāt is a verbal noun, meaning, ‘restraining them [for use] in the way of God’) that thereby you may dismay, terrify, the enemy of God and your enemy, namely, the disbelievers of Mecca, and others besides them, that is, other than those — namely, the hypocrites or the Jews, whom you know not: God knows them. And whatever thing you expend in the way of God, its requital, shall be repaid to you in full, and you will not be wronged, [you will not] be diminished anything thereof.