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أَمْ كُنتُمْ شُهَدَآءَ إِذْ حَضَرَ يَعْقُوبَ ٱلْمَوْتُ إِذْ قَالَ لِبَنِيهِ مَا تَعْبُدُونَ مِن بَعْدِي قَالُواْ نَعْبُدُ إِلَـٰهَكَ وَإِلَـٰهَ آبَائِكَ إِبْرَاهِيمَ وَإِسْمَاعِيلَ وَإِسْحَاقَ إِلَـٰهاً وَاحِداً وَنَحْنُ لَهُ مُسْلِمُونَ
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-Al-Baqarah ( البقرة )

Tafsir al-Jalalayn

When the Jews said to the Prophet (s), ‘Do you not know that on the day of his death Jacob charged his sons with Judaism?’, the following was revealed: Or, were you witnesses, present, when death came to Jacob? When (idh, ‘when’, substitutes for the preceding idh) he said to his sons, ‘What will you worship after me?’, after I die?; They said, ‘We will worship your God and the God of your fathers Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac (in recognition of the predominant [mention of the father figures] Ishmael is also counted as a father, and also because the status of an uncle is akin to that of a father), One God (ilāhan wāhidan, ‘One God’, substitutes for ilāhaka, ‘your God’), to Him we submit’ (the initial am [of the phrase am kuntum, ‘Or, were you …’] is similar to the hamza of denial [sc. a-kuntum], the sense being, ‘You were not present at his death, so how do you ascribe to him what does not befit him?’).


Tafsir al-Jalalayn, trans. Feras Hamza
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