Part 262

O Believers! fear God, and speak with well-guided speech.

That God may bless your doings for you, and forgive you your sins. And whoso obeyeth God and His Apostle with great bliss shall be blessed.

Verily, we proposed to the Heavens, and to the Earth, and to the Mountains to receive the Faith, but they refused the burden, and they feared to receive it. Man undertook to bear it, but hath proved unjust, senseless!

Therefore will God punish the hypocritical men and the hypocritical women, and the men and the women who join gods with God; but to the believing men and women will God turn him: for God is Indulgent, Merciful!

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1 Medina was besieged, when this Sura was revealed, by certain confederate tribes at the instigation of the Jews, an. Hej. 5. The first nine verses, however, have no immediate reference to this event, but to Muhammad's cotemporary marriage with Zeinab. See below, verse 37.

2 The Arabians had been accustomed, before the time of Muhammad, to divorce their wives with the words,-thy back be to me as the back of my mother. The drift and motive of this passage is explained by verse 37 below. It had also been the custom to hold adopted sons to be as nearly related to them as their natural ones. See Sura lviii. 2, p. 451.

3 The Mohadjers-those who had emigrated with Muhammad from Mecca. This verse abrogates Sura [xcv.] viii. 73.

4 How they have discharged their prophetic functions.

5 Verses 9-33 have reference to the events of the year Hej. 5, towards the close. See next note. His. 688; Waq. 4 f.

6 In the engagement which took place under the walls of Medina, some of the enemy were posted on a height to the east of the city, others in a valley on the west. The besiegers were 12,000, the Muslims 3,000 strong, when a violent storm, which upset the tents, put out the camp fires, and blinded the eyes of the confederates with sand, turned the scale of victory against them. Muhammad ascribes the storm to angelic agency.

7 That is, with infidelity.

8 The ancient name of El-Medina.

9 In the trenches which had been dug around the city by the advice of Salmân, the Persian.

10 They would speedily have quitted the city to attack the faithful in the trenches.

11 That is, raise the siege.

12 That is, that through trials we should attain to Paradise, v. 29.

13 After the siege of Medina had been raised, Muhammad made a successful expedition against the Jews of Koreidha, for their treason and violation of treaties.

14 Muhammad's wives having caused him much annoyance by demands of rich dresses, etc., he gave them the choice of continuing with him as before, or of divorce. They chose the former. See Abulfeda's Hist. Moh. p. 77, and Gagnier's Vie de Moh. i. 4, chap. ii.

15 That is, Idolatry. Acts xvii. 30. Freytag (Einl. p. 453) thinks that previous to Islam, the Arabian women went in public unveiled.

16 The pronoun is in the pl. masc., whereas the pl. fem. is used in the previous part of the verse. The partisans of Ali quote this passage to prove the intimate union of Ali and his posterity with the Prophet.

17 That is, to Zaid. The favour of God to Zaid consisted in having caused him to become a Muslim: the favour of Muhammad in adopting him as his son. Zaid and Abu Lahab (Sura cxi. p. 29) are the only contemporaries of Muhammad mentioned by name in the Koran.

18 Thy plan to obtain Zeinab, or Zenobia, Zaid's wife, as thy wife.

19 Lit, who brought the messages of God.

20 If thou makest use of the special prerogative (conferred in verse 49).

21 He had nine wives at this period, beside slaves. The number of wives allowed to the faithful is four. See note, p. 411. 22 The first slave whom Muhammad took to wife was Raihana, at the conquest of the Banu Koreidha. His. 693. Weil, 170.

23 Verses 53-55 refer to the conduct of the guests at Muhammad's house after his marriage with Zeinab. Albuhari passim. Muslim i. 824 ff. Wah. Comp. Caussir, iii. 151.

24 Ullmann, p. 263, quotes a similar precept from the Talmud, "Do all that the master of the house biddeth, but wait not to be asked to depart."