Appearance
Verses 71–74
The verses recount a synopsis of the story of Noah and the messengers who came after him until the time of Moses and Aaron. The verses describe how God Almighty dealt with the nations who denied their messengers, destroying them and saving the messengers and the believers who followed them, so that the deniers among the Prophet’s nation could learn a lesson.
وَاتْلُ عَلَيْهِمْ نَبَأَ نُوحٍ إِذْ قَالَ لِقَوْمِهِ يَا قَوْمِ إِنْ كَانَ كَبُرَ عَلَيْكُمْ مَقَامِي وَتَذْكِيرِي بِآيَاتِ اللَّهِ فَعَلَى اللَّهِ تَوَكَّلْتُ فَأَجْمِعُوا أَمْرَكُمْ وَشُرَكَاءَكُمْ ثُمَّ لَا يَكُنْ أَمْرُكُمْ عَلَيْكُمْ غُمَّةً ثُمَّ اقْضُوا إِلَيَّ وَلَا تُنْظِرُونِ ٧١
(10:71) Relate to them the account of Noah when he said to his people, ‘O my people! If my stance (maqāmī) be hard on you and my reminding you of Allah’s signs, I have put my trust in Allah. So conspire together (ajmaʿū amrakum), along with your partners, leaving nothing vague in your plan (la yakun amrukum ʿalaykum ghumma), then carry it out against (wa aqḍū ʿalayya) me without giving me any respite.
Maqām (‘stance’) can be both an m-infinitive (maṣdar mīmī), a noun of time, or a noun of place, derived from the verb qiyām (‘to stand’ or ‘to undertake’). And here it is used in either the first or third sense. In other words, it either refers to him undertaking the prophetic mission to call people to God’s oneness, or to his rank as a prophet. Ijmāʿ (‘to conspire together’ from whence the verb ajmaʿū is derived) means ‘to resolve’ or ‘to decide’ and will sometimes take an object using the preposition ʿalā.
Al-Rāghib says: ‘The verb ajmaʿ is usually used when there is a group of people who combine their thoughts together to achieve a goal.’
Ghumma means ‘distress’ or ‘hardship‘ but also carries the meaning of ‘covering’, in the sense that grief covers the heart. It is related to the words ghumām (‘clouds’) and ghaym (‘to become cloudy’), because of the way in which clouds cover the sky. To do iqḍāʾ (from whence aqḍū is derived) means to finish something off by killing it or destroying it utterly.
The meaning of the verse is: Relate to them, O Muḥammad, the account of Noah, and his great account, when he faced his people alone, speaking for himself. He was a messenger to the people of the world and challenged them to do whatever they could if they had the power. He completed his argument against those who denied him when he said to his people, ‘O my people! If my stance— in calling for monotheism or the status of prophethood—be hard on you and my reminding you of Allah’s signs—which doubtless makes you want to kill me and inflict harm upon me as much as you can to free yourselves from me—I have put my trust in Allah—to guard me against the hatred towards me that coils in your chests, by turning my affair over to Him and making Him my trustee who will look after me affairs without me needing to look after anything—So conspire together, along with your partners—who you claim come to your aid in times of hardships, and resolve to do whatever seems best to you (and this is a challenged that is intended to reveal their impotence)—leaving nothing vague in your plan—waste no effort in your attempts to defeat me—then carry it out against me without giving me any respite…—or any delay.’
In this verse, Noah challenges his people to do whatever they want to him, demonstrating that his Lord is capable of protecting him even if they all gather against him and seek help from their partners and idols.
فَإِنْ تَوَلَّيْتُمْ فَمَا سَأَلْتُكُمْ مِنْ أَجْرٍ ۖ إِنْ أَجْرِيَ إِلَّا عَلَى اللَّهِ ۖ وَأُمِرْتُ أَنْ أَكُونَ مِنَ الْمُسْلِمِينَ ٧٢
(10:72) If you turn your back, I do not ask any reward from you; my reward lies only with Allah, and I have been commanded to be of those who submit.’
This continues from Noah’s affirmation that he has placed his trust in his Lord in the previous verse, and it is like putting the effect in place of the cause. The meaning is: ‘If you turn away and do not answer my call, there is no detriment in that for me, as I will not be harmed by your turning away from me. I would only be harmed by your turning away if I had asked you for a reward that would be lost due to your turning away, but I have not asked you for any reward, for my reward is only from God.’
… and I have been commanded to be of those who submit: Meaning, those who submit their affairs to Him to whatever He desires for them and from them, and who do not arrogantly refuse His command to submit because of the worldly means that people submit themselves to because they anticipate some benefit from them or fear some harm.
فَكَذَّبُوهُ فَنَجَّيْنَاهُ وَمَنْ مَعَهُ فِي الْفُلْكِ وَجَعَلْنَاهُمْ خَلَائِفَ وَأَغْرَقْنَا الَّذِينَ كَذَّبُوا بِآيَاتِنَا ۖ فَانْظُرْ كَيْفَ كَانَ عَاقِبَةُ الْمُنْذَرِينَ ٧٣
(10:73) But they impugned him. So We delivered him and those who were with him in the ark and We made them the successors (khalāʾif), and We drowned those who denied Our signs. So observe how was the fate of those who were warned!
Khalāʾif is the plural of khalīfa (‘successor’). The verse means, ‘We made those whom we saved successors on the earth and those who came after them succeeded them and took up their place.’ The remainder of the verse’s meaning is clear.
ثُمَّ بَعَثْنَا مِنْ بَعْدِهِ رُسُلًا إِلَىٰ قَوْمِهِمْ فَجَاءُوهُمْ بِالْبَيِّنَاتِ فَمَا كَانُوا لِيُؤْمِنُوا بِمَا كَذَّبُوا بِهِ مِنْ قَبْلُ ۚ كَذَٰلِكَ نَطْبَعُ عَلَىٰ قُلُوبِ الْمُعْتَدِينَ ٧٤
(10:74) Then after him We sent messengers to their people. They brought them manifest proofs, but they would not believe something they had denied before. Thus do We seal the hearts of the transgressors.
The messengers referred to in this verse are those who came after Noah until the time of Moses. It is evident from the context that the intended meaning of ‘manifest proofs’ (bayyinat) are the miraculous signs that the nations demanded from their prophets after they came, called their people to the truth, and were denied by them. The prophets brought these proofs, which included God’s judging between them and their nations. This is supported by the subsequent phrase, but they would not believe something they had denied before, and so on. What comes to mind first is that the messengers came to them with clear signs, but God had sealed their hearts due to their transgressions, so they were unable to believe in what they had previously denied.
This implies that their denial must have occurred even before the messengers came with these manifest proofs. The messengers had spread their call among the people and invited them to the Oneness of God, but they denied the message and the messengers. Then they demanded a miraculous sign from them, which the messengers brought, but they still did not believe.
We have previously discussed some aspects of this in our commentary on the verse: but they were not the ones to believe in what they had denied earlier (). There, we argued that this verse refers to the events that transpired in the pre-existent world (ʿālam al-dharr), but this does not contradict what we have just said about the meaning of this verse. The reader may refer back to that for further explanation.
Examining Narrations
- In al-Kāfī, al-Kulaynī narrates from Muḥammad b. Yaḥyā, from Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn, from Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, from Ṣāliḥ b. ʿUqbah, from ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad al-Juʿfī and ʿUqba, all from Abī Jaʿfar al-Bāqir, who said: ‘Surely God created the creation, so He created those whom He loved from what He loved, and so He created what He loved from the clay of paradise. And He created those whom He hated from what He hated, and so He created what He hated from the clay of hell. Then He brought them forth in the realm of shadows.’ I asked, ‘What is the realm of shadows?’ He replied, ‘Have you not seen your shadow in the sun, at once something and not something?’
Then He brought forth prophets from amongst them so that they could call them to acknowledge God: If you ask them, ‘Who created them?’ they will surely say, ‘Allah’ (). Then they called them to acknowledge the prophets, and some acknowledged, and some others denied. Then they called them to our allegiance, so those who acknowledged were loved by God, and those who denied were hated. This is His saying, but they would not believe something they had denied before (). Then Abū Jaʿfar said: ‘The denial was from before.’
Author’s comment: This tradition has been narrated by Shaykh al-Ṣadūq in ʿIlal al-Sharāʾiʿ, via his chain of narrators to Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, from Ṣāliḥ, from ʿAbd Allāh and ʿUqba, from the Imām. And it has also been narrated by al-ʿAyyāshī from al-Juʿfī from the Imām.
- And in Tafsīr of al-ʿAyyāshī, it is narrated from Zurāra and Ḥumrān, from Abī Jaʿfar al-Bāqir and Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ṣādiq: ‘He created the creation, and they were as shadows, then He sent His Messenger Muḥammad to them. Some of them believed in him and others denied him, then He sent him amongst the other creation, and those who had believed in him in the shadows believed in him therein, and those who had denied him in the shadows denied him therein.’ He explained: they would not believe something they had denied before.
Author’s comment: We have elaborated on what is referred to as the world of pre-existence (ʿālam al-dharr) in the commentary on the verse: When your Lord took from the Children of Adam, from their loins, their descendants and made them bear witness over themselves: ‘Am I not your Lord?’ They said, ‘Yes indeed! We bear witness.’ Lest you should say on the Day of Resurrection, ‘Indeed we were unaware of this,’ (). There, we explained that the verses on the world of pre-existence establish the existence of another human world that is distinct from this material plane filled with pain, disasters, sins, and wrongdoings that we perceive through our senses.
This world of pre-existence is somewhat comparable to this perceptible world, but it is not governed by the same material laws, and its precedence over our world is not in terms of time but in another kind of precedence, similar to the precedence derived from His saying: All His command, when He wills something, is to say to it ‘Be,’ and it is (). For the divine command ‘Be’ and ‘it is’ bespeak a single reality, which is the existence of something externally. However, this existence itself, in its aspect that is turned towards God, takes precedence over it in its other aspect. In this divine aspect, it is neither gradual, nor temporal, nor hidden from its Lord, nor cut off from Him, unlike its aspect that faces towards creation, which we have discussed in detail there.
What we have found in our discussion of the narrations shows that the world of pre-existence is like what has already been mentioned, but it is characterized by a subtle quality, which is what is expressed by referring to it as ‘the realm of shadows.’ Indeed, by carefully contemplating this expression, the intended meaning becomes clearer. For in the cosmic matters, there are things like shadows in that they are inseparable from them, reflecting the particularities of their existence and the effects of their existence, and yet, they are the same and, at the same time, they are not.
If we examine things and take an abstract view, reducing them to being nothing other than God’s creation and pure acts of His that are neither detached from Him nor separate from Him—which is a true view of reality—nothing is realized in the core of their being except pure submission to God, subjugation to His will, humbleness before His majesty, attachment to His mercy, the command of His Lordship, and faith in His oneness and in what He sent His messengers with and revealed to them of His religion.
This is because these entities are shadows—both things and not things—when compared to the existences of material things—and the material world is taken as the basis for comparison, on which the verses are built from the perspective of their purpose being the clarification of the duty to assert God’s oneness, an inescapable obligation that one is held accountable for on the Day of Resurrection.
And if we look from the perspective of God, and take this as our basis, and then this material world, with its material entities, is compared to it—which is also a true view of reality—then this world would be like a shadow, the divine would be the origin, and the caster of the shadow, as indicated by His saying, Everything is to perish except His Face (), and His saying: Everyone on it is ephemeral, yet lasting is the Face of your Lord ().
Now let us consider the tradition of al-ʿAyyāshī who narrates from Abū Baṣīr from Imām al-Ṣādiq, regarding the verse, but they would not believe something they had denied before, in which he said: ‘God sent the messengers to humankind while they were in the loins of men and the wombs of women, so whoever believed at that time believed after that, and whoever denied at that time denied after that.’
The apparent meaning of this tradition is that the sending of prophets is related to the seeds contained in the loins and wombs. These are characterized living, rational, and morally responsible beings. However, this is something that is necessarily known to be false, as we discussed in our treatment of the verse about the world of pre-existence. That it is unless, of course, the tradition is interpreted as referring to the world of pre-existence which surrounds this material, gradual, temporal world in the sense that the world of pre-existence exists outside of time. Hence, human existence in that realm is not associated with a specific point of time of human existence in this world (for example, when one is still a seed in the loins of one’s forefathers). However, this is somewhat an unlikely reading of the tradition.