Tafseer of The Cow · Al-Baqara · 2:64
Then you turned away after that. And if not for the favor of Allah upon you and His mercy, you would have been among the losers.
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.
## The explanation of the saying of the Exalted: ثُمَّ تَوَلَّيْتُمْ مِنْ بَعْدِ ذَلِكَ
(Then you turned away, thereafter)
Abū Jaʿfar said: By His saying — exalted be His praise — "then you turned away (thumma tawallaytum)" He means: thereafter you turned aside. It is in reality a form "tafaʿʿaltum" derived from their expression: "So-and-so turned his back to me (wallānī fulān duburahu)," when a person turns away from another and leaves him behind his back. It is then used for everyone who abandons the obedience he was commanded to render and turns his face away. One says: "So-and-so has turned away from the obedience of so-and-so (qad tawallā fulān ʿan ṭāʿati fulān), and he has turned away from associating with him." To this belongs the saying of Allah — exalted be His praise —: فَلَمَّا آتَاهُمْ مِنْ فَضْلِهِ بَخِلُوا بِهِ وَتَوَلَّوْا وَهُمْ مُعْرِضُونَ (At-Tawbah: 76)
(But when He gave them of His bounty, they were stingy with it and turned away, while they were averse)
By this He means: they went against what they had promised Allah by their saying: لَئِنْ آتَانَا مِنْ فَضْلِهِ لَنَصَّدَّقَنَّ وَلَنَكُونَنَّ مِنَ الصَّالِحِينَ (At-Tawbah: 75)
(If He gives us of His bounty, we will surely give in charity and we will surely be among the righteous)
and they cast that behind their backs.
* * *
It is the custom of the Arabs to take over a word and place it in the position of its counterpart, as Abū Khirāsh al-Hudhalī said:
> "It is no longer as the covenant of the abode, O mother of Mālik, > but the chains have encompassed the necks;
> and the youth became like the man advanced in age, who says nothing > but the truth, and the women who blame have come to rest."
By his saying "the chains have encompassed the necks" he means that Islam — in its restraining us from what we used to do in the time of ignorance (jāhiliyyah), namely that which Allah has forbidden us in Islam — has become like chains that encompass our necks, chains that place a separation between the one whose neck is clamped within them — together with the fetter that is upon his hand — and that which he tries to grasp.
The like examples of this in the language of the Arabs are more numerous than can be counted. So too is His saying: "then you turned away, thereafter." By this He means: that you abandoned acting upon that for which We took your covenant and your oath to act with diligence and effort, after you had given to your Lord the covenants to act upon it and to fulfill what He had commanded you in your Book — but you cast it behind your backs.
And by His saying — exalted be His mention — "that (dhālika)" He refers to all that preceded in the foregoing verse, I mean His saying: وَإِذْ أَخَذْنَا مِيثَاقَكُمْ وَرَفَعْنَا فَوْقَكُمُ الطُّورَ
(And when We accepted your covenant and raised the mount Aṭ-Ṭūr above you)
* * *
## The explanation of the saying of the Exalted, whose mention is exalted: فَلَوْلا فَضْلُ اللَّهِ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَتُهُ
(And were it not for the bounty of Allah upon you and His mercy)
Abū Jaʿfar said: By His saying — exalted be His mention —: "And were it not for the bounty of Allah upon you" He means: and were it not that Allah granted you the bounty of repentance — after your breaking of the covenant that you had made, when He raised the mount Aṭ-Ṭūr above you, namely that you would strive in obedience to Him, in performing His obligations, in fulfilling what He commanded you, and in abstaining from what He forbade you in the Book that He gave you — and thus He bestowed upon you the bounty of Islam and of His mercy by which He was merciful to you, and overlooked your sin which you had committed, by your returning to obedience to your Lord — then you would have been among the losers.
And this, even though it is an address directed to the People of the Book who were in the midst of the place to which the Messenger of Allah ﷺ had emigrated, in the days of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, is in reality a report about their forefathers. The report has been delivered in the form of something narrated about them — in the manner that we have set forth earlier, namely that one tribe of the Arabs addresses another tribe in boasting or in something else, with that which the forefathers of the speaker did with the forefathers of the one addressed, ascribing the deed of the speaker's forefathers to himself and saying: "we did such and such to you, and we did such and such to you." We have already mentioned earlier some proofs of that from their poetry.
* * *
Some have claimed that the address in these verses was delivered only by ascribing the deed to those who are addressed by it — while the deed was in reality of others — because those addressed felt themselves connected to those among the earlier Children of Israel who had done that. Therefore Allah counted them among them, because of their loyalty (wilāya) toward them.
* * *
And others have said: this was only said thus because the listeners knew — even though the address was delivered as an address to the living among the Children of Israel and the People of the Book — that the meaning therein is only a report about what Allah has related of tidings about their forefathers. Thus, because of the listeners' knowledge of that, one could dispense with naming their forefathers by name. And comparable to that is what the poet says:
> "When we gave our lineage, no base woman bore me, > and you found no way to escape acknowledging it."
He said "when we gave our lineage (idhā mā intasabnā)," and "idhā" requires a future action, but then he said "no base woman bore me (lam talidnī laʾīma)," and thus he gave report of an action in the past. That is because the birth has already taken place and is past. He did this — according to the one who argues with it — only because the listener already understood its intent. Thus he regards what we have mentioned — namely the address of Allah to the People of the Book who were in the midst of the place to which the Messenger of Allah ﷺ had emigrated, in the days of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, by ascribing the deeds of their forefathers to them — as similar to that.
And the first of what we have said is the widespread usage in the language and the address of the Arabs.
* * *
Abū al-ʿĀliya said concerning His saying: "And were it not for the bounty of Allah upon you and His mercy" — according to what has been transmitted to us — something that agrees with the saying we have made.
1136 — Al-Muthannā ibn Ibrāhīm related to me, saying: Ādam related to us, saying: Abū al-Naḍr related to us, on the authority of ar-Rabīʿ, on the authority of Abū al-ʿĀliya, concerning: "And were it not for the bounty of Allah upon you and His mercy," he said: "the bounty of Allah" is Islam, "and His mercy" is the Qurʾān.
1137 — And it was related to me on the authority of ʿAmmār, saying: Ibn Abī Jaʿfar related to us [on the authority of his father], on the authority of ar-Rabīʿ, something similar.
* * *
## The explanation of the saying of the Exalted, whose mention is exalted: لَكُنْتُمْ مِنَ الْخَاسِرِينَ (64)
(then you would have been among the losers)
Abū Jaʿfar said: And were it not for the bounty of Allah upon you and His mercy toward you — by saving you through the acceptance of your repentance for your sin and your crime — then you would have been those who forever deny themselves their share, ruined by what you had committed, namely the breaking of your covenant and your opposition to His command and to obedience to Him.
Our exposition with the proofs concerning the meaning of "the loss (al-khasār)" has already preceded, in a manner that makes it unnecessary to repeat it in this place.
----------------
Footnotes:
(36) In the printed edition it reads: "the obedience to a command: Mighty and Exalted," with the addition of the praise of our Lord, glorious be He, and with "amr" (command) vocalized in the passive form. This contradicts the context and is an error of the copyists.
(37) In the printed edition it read: "Abū Dhuʾayb al-Hudhalī said," and that is a flagrant error, which someone like Abū Jaʿfar would not make.
(38) Dīwān al-Hudhaliyyīn 2: 150, and the Sīra of Ibn Hishām 4: 116, and al-Aghānī 21: 41, and al-Kāmil 1: 267. These are excellent verses in a lament over a friend. The occasion was that Zuhayr ibn al-ʿAjwa al-Hudhalī of the Banū ʿAmr ibn al-Ḥārith — who was the cousin of Abū Khirāsh and his friend — set out to seek booty on the day of Ḥunayn. He was taken captive and chained in the midst of a number of people whom the Companions of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ had taken captive. Jamīl ibn Maʿmar al-Jumaḥī saw him — and there was between the two of them a feud from the time of ignorance — and said to him: "Are you the one who assails us with malice?" and he struck off his head. Then Abū Khirāsh recited a lament over him, and he said to Jamīl ibn Maʿmar:
> "And indeed, had you faced him when you met him > and fought him, or had you been among those who fight,
> then Jamīl would have become the man with the worst mourning among the people; > but the fetter on the back keeps a man occupied."
> "It is no longer as the covenant ........
And in the printed edition it reads: "fa-laysa li-ʿahdi al-dār" — an error. By his saying "the abode (al-dār)" he means: Mecca and what surrounds it and what borders it. He says: the matter is no longer as I have known it and as you have known it; Islam has come and has demolished all of that.
(39) He says: the youth has relinquished the qualities of his youthful impetuosity and his vehemence, and has become like the man advanced in age in his deliberateness and his steadfastness. For the religion has felled the young men of strength and combativeness and brought them to rest out of fear of the punishment of their Lord, in the death penalty without combat or battle. And the women who blame came to rest, because they no longer found anything for which they could blame their husbands on account of exposing themselves to destruction.
(40) See what preceded in this volume, 2: 38-39.
(41) In the printed edition it reads: "idh the meaning therein...," and that is a saying that is not correct. The context of the sentence requires that one place "anna" in the position of "idh," that is to say: "because the listeners knew ... that the meaning therein...," and what stands between is an interruption and a parenthetical clause.
(42) In the gloss of al-Amīr on Mughnī al-Labīb 1: 25 it states: "In the gloss of as-Suyūṭī" the poet is Zāʾida ibn Ṣaʿṣaʿa al-Faqʿasī, who criticizes his wife, whose mother was a slave woman (sariyya), but as-Suyūṭī did not ascribe it to him in his commentary on the proof verses of the Mughnī (33).
(43) This will come in this volume, 1: 333 (Būlāq), and in 3: 49 (Būlāq), and in Maʿānī al-Farrāʾ: 61, 178. Before this verse he says to his wife:
> "She shot me with the bow of the enemy, and ʿUbayda > kept me at a distance — may Allah increase the distance between us."
(44) What stands between brackets is a necessary addition. See the end of the isnād on the authority of ʿAmmār ibn al-Ḥasan, number 1134.
(45) See what preceded, 1: 417.
