Tafseer of The Repentance · At-Tawba · 9:15
And remove the fury in the believers' hearts. And Allah turns in forgiveness to whom He wills; and Allah is Knowing and Wise.
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 discourse on the explanation of His statement: "and remove the rage from their hearts; and Allah turns in forgiveness (yatūbu) to whom He wills, and Allah is All-Knowing, All-Wise" (9:15).
Abū Jaʿfar said: Allah, the Exalted, whose mention is exalted, says: and He removes the rancour from the hearts of those believing people of [the tribe of] Khuzāʿah toward those people among the polytheists (mushrikīn) who had broken their oaths, and [He removes] the grief and distress thereof on account of the rancour they harboured against them, because they had aided [the tribe of] Bakr against them — as in:
16546 - Ibn Wakīʿ related to me, saying: ʿAmr ibn Muḥammad al-ʿAnqazī related to us, on the authority of Asbāṭ, from al-Suddī: "and remove the rage from their hearts" — when the Banū Bakr killed them and the Quraysh aided them [in that].
16547 - Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn related to us, saying: Aḥmad ibn al-Mufaḍḍal related to us, saying: Asbāṭ related to us, on the authority of al-Suddī, the same [report] = except that he said: and the Quraysh aided them against them.
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As for His statement: "and Allah turns in forgiveness to whom He wills" — this is a new, independent piece of information, and that is why it stands in the nominative (rafʿ). The three preceding verbs were placed in the jussive (jazm) by way of requital/conditionality, as if He said: fight them, for if you fight them, Allah will punish them by your hands, humiliate them, and grant you victory over them. = Then He began anew and said: "and Allah turns in forgiveness to whom He wills", because the fighting does not make the repentance (tawbah) of Allah obligatory for them, whereas it does make obligatory for them the punishment of Allah, and the humiliation, and the healing of the breasts of the believers, and the removal of the rage from their hearts. All of that was therefore placed in the jussive as a condition and requital for the fighting, but the fighting did not make the repentance obligatory, and that is why the information about it was begun anew and put in the nominative.
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And the meaning of the statement is: and Allah shows mercy to whom He wills of His unbelieving servants, and thus brings him to repentance by His decree to enable him thereto (tawfīq). = "and Allah is All-Knowing" — of the inner secrets of His servants, and of who is worthy that He should turn [in forgiveness] to him, so that He turns to him, and who of them is not worthy, so that He forsakes him. = "All-Wise" — in directing His servants from a state of unbelief to a state of belief, through the enabling (tawfīq) of whom He enables thereto, = and from a state of belief to unbelief, through the forsaking (khidhlān) of whom of them He forsakes with regard to obedience to Him and the acknowledgement of His oneness (tawḥīd), and with regard to other matters that concern them.
[The footnotes refer, for the explanation of "al-idhhāb" (the removal), to what precedes, 12:126, note 3, and the references there; for "al-ghayẓ" (the rage) to 7:215; for "tāba", "ʿalīm" and "ḥakīm" to the earlier lexical indices. Text-critical remarks note divergent readings between the printed edition and the manuscript.]
