Home > Tafsir Library > Tafsir

Tafsir

< >
View

وَلَتَجِدَنَّهُمْ أَحْرَصَ ٱلنَّاسِ عَلَىٰ حَيَاةٍ وَمِنَ ٱلَّذِينَ أَشْرَكُواْ يَوَدُّ أَحَدُهُمْ لَوْ يُعَمَّرُ أَلْفَ سَنَةٍ وَمَا هُوَ بِمُزَحْزِحِهِ مِنَ ٱلْعَذَابِ أَن يُعَمَّرَ وَٱللَّهُ بَصِيرٌ بِمَا يَعْمَلُونَ
٩٦
-Al-Baqarah ( البقرة )

Tafsir al-Jalalayn

And you shall find them (the lām of la-tajidannahum is for oaths) the people most covetous of life, and, more covetous of it than, the idolaters, who reject the [idea of the] Resurrection, for the former know that their journey’s end will be the Fire, while the idolaters do not believe even in this; any one of them would love, wishes, that he might be given life for a thousand years (law yu‘ammar, ‘[if only] he might be given life’: the particle law, ‘if only’, relates to the verbal noun and functions with the sense of an, ‘that’, and together with its relative clause explains the [implicit] verbal noun in the object of the verb yawaddu, ‘he would love’); yet, any one of them, his being given life (an yu‘ammara, ‘that he should be given life’, constitutes the subject of the verb muzahzihihi, ‘that it should budge him’ [this verb comes later], as though it were ta‘mīruhu, ‘the giving of life to him’) shall not budge, remove, him from the chastisement, of the Fire. God sees what they do (ya‘malūna may be alternatively read ta‘malūna, ‘you do’), and will requite them. [‘Abd Allāh] Ibn Sūryā asked the Prophet (s), or ‘Umar [b. al-Khattāb], about which angel brings down the revelation, and he replied that it was Gabriel; he [Ibn Sūryā] then said, ‘He is our enemy, because he brings chastisement with him; had it been Michael, we would have believed in him, because he brings fertility and security.’ Then, the following was revealed:


Tafsir al-Jalalayn, trans. Feras Hamza
© 2021 Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, Amman, Jordan (http://www.aalalbayt.org) ® All Rights Reserved
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, this work may not be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the Great Tafsirs Project, Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought (aalalbayt@aalalbayt.org)