The Cattle (Al-An‘am)
Verses 33-36 GROUP_208 6.33-36
33
قَدْ نَعْلَمُ إِنَّهُ لَيَحْزُنُكَ الَّذِي يَقُولُونَ فَإِنَّهُمْ لاَ يُكَذِّبُونَكَ وَلَكِنَّ الظَّالِمِينَ بِآيَاتِ اللّهِ يَجْحَدُونَ
We know that what they say grieves you. It is not you that the wrongdoers are rejecting, rather it is the signs of God that they reject.
34
وَلَقَدْ كُذِّبَتْ رُسُلٌ مِّن قَبْلِكَ فَصَبَرُواْ عَلَى مَا كُذِّبُواْ وَأُوذُواْ حَتَّى أَتَاهُمْ نَصْرُنَا وَلاَ مُبَدِّلَ لِكَلِمَاتِ اللّهِ وَلَقدْ جَاءكَ مِن نَّبَإِ الْمُرْسَلِينَ
Other messengers have been denied before you, and they bore their rejection and persecution steadfastly, until Our help came to them. There is no one who can change the words of God. You have already received some account of those messengers.
35
وَإِن كَانَ كَبُرَ عَلَيْكَ إِعْرَاضُهُمْ فَإِنِ اسْتَطَعْتَ أَن تَبْتَغِيَ نَفَقًا فِي الأَرْضِ أَوْ سُلَّمًا فِي السَّمَاء فَتَأْتِيَهُم بِآيَةٍ وَلَوْ شَاء اللّهُ لَجَمَعَهُمْ عَلَى الْهُدَى فَلاَ تَكُونَنَّ مِنَ الْجَاهِلِينَ
If you find their rejection hard to bear, then seek a tunnel into the ground or a ladder into the sky, if you can, and bring them a sign. Had God so willed, He would indeed have given them all [His] guidance. So do not be among the ignorant.
36
إِنَّمَا يَسْتَجِيبُ الَّذِينَ يَسْمَعُونَ وَالْمَوْتَى يَبْعَثُهُمُ اللّهُ ثُمَّ إِلَيْهِ يُرْجَعُونَ
Only they who listen can respond to a call; and as for the dead, God will raise them up, and then they will all return to Him.
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Commentary
(a) Abu Jahl said to the Prophet, ‘O, Muhammad! By God, we do not reject you. Only we deny that which you have brought.’ That is, the people of Makkah who had not embraced the faith nevertheless admitted that he was a righteous person. But, to say of a person that his utterances were marked by Truth and reality amounted to glorifying him, and they were not prepared to give him such high honour. When they called him, ‘truthful and honest’ they had the mental satisfaction that he was a man of their own level, but admitting that God’s own discourse emanated from his lips amounted to according him a status higher than their own, and such an admission is the most difficult one for any man to make. In the present world, God does not appear directly in His original shape. He appears before man in the shape of arguments, signs and symbols. Therefore, not accepting arguments in support of the Truth, or turning a blind eye to the signs in its favour amounts to a refusal to accept God, or to turning one’s eyes away from the face of God. However, it is not part of God’s plan to appear along with compelling miracles, for if His call were to be presented in this context, freedom of action would come to an end; for the purpose of maintaining test conditions, an atmosphere of freedom of action must be perpetuated. The dayee should not be put out by the fact that he has only the weight of arguments to offer or that he possesses no extraordinary powers of control. Instead of being worried on this account, he should exercise patience. The making of efforts in connection with the mission of truth, is on the one hand, a test of the dayee’s patience and, on the other, a test of the addressees as to whether they are able to see a glimpse of God’s representative in a man like themselves. Are they able to recognise the majesty of God’s message in the words coming out of a man’s mouth; do they bow down before arguments that are devoid of material strength, as they will bow down before a strong and powerful God? For those who have life in them, the whole universe is full of God‘s signs, but those who have extinguished the fire of their sensitivities will not be able to learn a lesson from anything except the terrors of Doomsday.