Tafseer of The Thunder · Ar-Ra'd · 13:38
And We have already sent messengers before you and assigned to them wives and descendants. And it was not for a messenger to come with a sign except by permission of Allah. For every term is a decree.
Important: The Arabic source text is always authoritative. This translation is a study aid and has not been verified by scholars — do not use it as a basis for religious proof or for deriving rulings (ahkam). When in doubt, always consult the Arabic text and a qualified scholar.
Abū Jaʿfar said: The Exalted says: وَلَقَدْ أَرْسَلْنَا — O Muḥammad — رُسُلاً مِنْ قَبْلِكَ (and indeed We sent messengers before you) to peoples who passed away before your community, and We made them human beings like you — they had wives with whom they had relations, and offspring whom they brought forth. We did not make them angels who do not eat, do not drink, and have no relations, such that We would make the messenger to your people from among the angels like them — rather, We sent to them human beings like themselves, just as We had sent to those before them, from all the earlier peoples, human beings like themselves.
وَمَا كَانَ لِرَسُولٍ أَنْ يَأْتِيَ بِآيَةٍ إِلا بِإِذْنِ اللَّهِ (and it was not for any messenger to come with a sign except by the permission of Allah) — the Exalted says: no messenger whom Allah has sent to His creation is able to bring his community a sign and proof — such as setting the mountains in motion, moving a city from one place to another, raising the dead, and the like of such signs — إِلا بِإِذْنِ اللَّهِ (except by the permission of Allah) — He says: unless by the command of Allah to the mountains to move, to the earth to shift, and to the dead one that he rise.
لِكُلِّ أَجَلٍ كِتَابٌ (for every term there is a writing) — He says: for every appointed term of a matter that Allah has decreed, there is a writing which He has written down and which is with Him.
It has also been said: the meaning is — for every book that Allah has sent down from heaven there is an appointed term.
Mention of who said that:
20460 — Al-Muthanā related to me, he said: Isḥāq ibn Yūsuf related to us, on the authority of Juwaybir, on the authority of al-Ḍaḥḥāk, concerning His word: لِكُلِّ أَجَلٍ كِتَابٌ — he said: for every book that descends from heaven there is an appointed term, and Allah erases what He wills and confirms what He wills — with Him is the Mother of the Book (umm al-kitāb).
Abū Jaʿfar said: And according to this reading, this resembles the word of Allah: وَجَاءَتْ سَكْرَةُ الْمَوْتِ بِالْحَقِّ [Surah Qāf 50:19]. And Abū Bakr — may Allah have mercy on him — read it as "wajaʾat sakratu al-ḥaqqi bi-al-mawt" (and the intoxication of the truth has come with death), and that is because the intoxication of death comes with the truth and the truth comes with it. Likewise, the term has a writing and the writing has a term.
