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أَلَمْ تَرَ إِلَى ٱلَّذِينَ خَرَجُواْ مِن دِيَٰرِهِمْ وَهُمْ أُلُوفٌ حَذَرَ ٱلْمَوْتِ فَقَالَ لَهُمُ ٱللَّهُ مُوتُواْ ثُمَّ أَحْيَٰهُمْ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَذُو فَضْلٍ عَلَى ٱلنَّاسِ وَلَـٰكِنَّ أَكْثَرَ ٱلنَّاسِ لاَ يَشْكُرُونَ
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-Al-Baqarah ( البقرة )

Tafsir al-Jalalayn

Have you not seen (an interrogative to provoke amazement and a longing to hear what will follow), that is, ‘Has your knowledge not attained’, those thousands, four, eight, ten, thirty, forty or seventy thousand, who went forth from their habitations fearful of death? (hadhara’l-mawt: an object denoting reason). These were a people from among the Children of Israel who fled their homeland after it was afflicted with plague. God said to them, ‘Die!’, and they did. Then He gave them life, after eight days or more, as a result of the supplication of their prophet Ezekiel (Hizqīl), and they lived on for a while with the effects of death still upon them, such that when they wore garments these turned into shrouds for the deceased; and this [phenomenon] remained with their descendants. Truly God is bounteous to people, such as when He gave life back to those just mentioned, but most people, that is, disbelievers, are not thankful. The purpose of mentioning the story of these people is to encourage believers to fight [in the way of God], which is why the following [statement] is supplemented to it:


Tafsir al-Jalalayn, trans. Feras Hamza
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