The Heights (Al-A‘raf)
Verses 100-102 GROUP_273 7.100-102
100
أَوَلَمْ يَهْدِ لِلَّذِينَ يَرِثُونَ الأَرْضَ مِن بَعْدِ أَهْلِهَا أَن لَّوْ نَشَاء أَصَبْنَاهُم بِذُنُوبِهِمْ وَنَطْبَعُ عَلَى قُلُوبِهِمْ فَهُمْ لاَ يَسْمَعُونَ
Does it not guide the people who inherit the land from former people that We can punish them for their sins if We will? And seal up their hearts so that they would not be able to lend an ear to words of guidance?
101
تِلْكَ الْقُرَى نَقُصُّ عَلَيْكَ مِنْ أَنبَآئِهَا وَلَقَدْ جَاءتْهُمْ رُسُلُهُم بِالْبَيِّنَاتِ فَمَا كَانُواْ لِيُؤْمِنُواْ بِمَا كَذَّبُواْ مِن قَبْلُ كَذَلِكَ يَطْبَعُ اللّهُ عَلَىَ قُلُوبِ الْكَافِرِينَ
We have told you the stories of those towns: their messengers came to them with clear signs, but they were never going to believe in something they had already rejected. Thus God seals up the hearts of those who deny the truth.
102
وَمَا وَجَدْنَا لأَكْثَرِهِم مِّنْ عَهْدٍ وَإِن وَجَدْنَا أَكْثَرَهُمْ لَفَاسِقِينَ
We found most of them untrue to their covenants, indeed We found most of them to be defiant.
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Commentary
(a) It happens again and again that a community reaches a high level of honour and prosperity and thereafter faces decline. It is removed from the scene and in its place another community occupies the same position of honour and prosperity that the former community enjoyed. This event is a sign of God, which should remind man of His supremacy. It shows that all the strings controlling gains and losses are in the hands of a supreme being. He may award good fortune to one or take it away from another. Making use of the powers of observation and thinking bestowed on him by God, man can easily understand these facts. He will realise that had the real source of power not been in other hands, the group which once managed to attain ascendancy would never have allowed others to replace it. If man can learn such lessons, he will find divine nourishment in the rise and fall of nations. But whenever a community falls from grace and another community rises in its place, the members of the rising community entertain the misunderstanding that whatever happened to the previous community was the fate particular to that community, and that it was never going to happen to them. (a) God has blessed man with the powers of observation, hearing and thinking, so that he may learn lessons and, with their help, may understand the signs of God. But when a man does not utilize these powers for the purpose for which they were intended, then it inevitably happens that the sensitivity of his heart starts waning until his feelings become blunted; the seal of insensitivity is thus fixed on his heart and mind. Now, his position becomes that of one who does not see in spite of having eyes, does not hear in spite of having ears and does not understand in spite of having a mind; and in spite of being a human being, he loses his humanity. The human race began with the followers of Adam. Thereafter, when they fell into wrong ways, the prophets of God came to admonish them. Now those who reformed themselves on the advent of the prophets were saved and those who refused to be reformed were destroyed. Again the following generations forgot the vows of submission to God made to their prophets, and they suffered the same consequences as those of the later generations of Adam’s followers. Such a state of affairs has occurred again and again, so much so that the history of the greater part of the human race has become that of disobedience and the breaking of pledges.