Verse. 4087

٣٩ - ٱلزُّمَر

39 - Az-Zumar

ضَرَبَ اللہُ مَثَلًا رَّجُلًا فِيْہِ شُرَكَاۗءُ مُتَشٰكِسُوْنَ وَرَجُلًا سَلَمًا لِّرَجُلٍ۝۰ۭ ہَلْ يَسْتَوِيٰنِ مَثَلًا۝۰ۭ اَلْحَمْدُ لِلہِ۝۰ۭ بَلْ اَكْثَرُہُمْ لَا يَعْلَمُوْنَ۝۲۹
Daraba Allahu mathalan rajulan feehi shurakao mutashakisoona warajulan salaman lirajulin hal yastawiyani mathalan alhamdu lillahi bal aktharuhum la yaAAlamoona

English

Ahmed Ali

God advances the example of a man who is owned (as slave in common) by a number of men at loggerheads, and another man who is owned by only one. Are these two alike in attribute? God be praised; yet many of them do not know.

29

Tafseer

'Abdullāh Ibn 'Abbās / Muḥammad al-Fīrūzabādī

تفسير : (allah coineth a similitude: a man in relation to whom are several part owners, quarrelling) one ordering him to do something while the other forbidding him from doing the same; such is the similitude of a man who worships several deities, (and a man belonging wholly to one man) this is like the believer who worships only allah and surrenders his religion and works to allah alone. (are the two equal in similitude) are the disbeliever and believer equal? (praise be to allah) divine oneness and praise belong to allah! (but most of them know not) the similitudes of the qur'an.

Jalāl al-Dīn al-Maḥallī

تفسير : god strikes, for the idolater and the believer in god’s oneness, a similitude: a man (rajulan, substitutes for mathalan, ‘a similitude’) shared by several [masters], quarrelling, disputing, ill-mannered, and a man belonging exclusively to one man. are the two equal in comparison? (mathalan, for specification), in other words, the slave of many [masters] is not the same as the slave of a single person. for in the case of the former, if all of his masters were to demand his service simultaneously, he would be confused as to whom of them he should serve — which is the similitude of the idolater; the latter [the slave of one] is the similitude of the one who believes in the one god. praise be to god!, alone. nay, but most of them, that is, the people of mecca, do not know, the chastisement in which they will end up and so they associate others with god.