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Lit., "beneath me", i.e., "at my command": a reference to the imposing irrigation system originating in the Nile and controlled by royal power.
Branches of the Nile.
The waw here in Arabic is the Waw haliya: the abundant streams from the Nile flowing beneath his palace being evidence of his power, prosperity, and sovereignty. The Nile made (and makes) Egypt, and the myth of the god Osiris was a compound of the myths of the Nile and the sun. The Pharaoh, therefore, as commanding the Nile, commanded the gods who personified Egypt. He boasted of water, and he perished in water,-a fitting punishment!
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An allusion to the impediment in speech from which Moses suffered (cf. {20:27-28} and the corresponding note [17]), or perhaps to the contents of his message, which to Pharaoh appeared unconvincing.
Moses used to have a speech impediment. But when he became a prophet he prayed to Allah to help him speak clearly, and his prayer was answered (see 20:25-36).
Being a despised Israelite in any case, and having further an impediment in his speech. See xx. 27, and notes 2552-53.
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In ancient Egypt, golden armless and necklaces were regarded as princely insignia (cf. Genesis xii, 42), or at least as evidence of high social dignity. This is apparently an echo of the pagan objection to Muhammad, mentioned in verse {31} above: "Why was not this Qur'an bestowed from on high on some great man of the two cities?" The same is the case with the subsequent reference to the "absence of angels".
Gold bracelets and gold chains were possibly among the insignia of royalty. In any case they betokened wealth, and the materialists judge a man's worth by his wealth and his following and equipage. So Pharaoh wanted to see Moses, if he had any position in the spiritual kingdom, invested with gold bracelets, and followed by a great train of angels as his Knight-companions! The same kind of proofs were demanded by the materialist Quraish of our holy Prophet. These were puerilities, but such puerilities go down with the crowd. Barring a few Egyptians who believed in Allah and in the Message of Moses, the rest of Pharaoh's entourage followed Pharaoh in his pursuit of revenge, and were drowned in the Red Sea.
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Allah is patient, and gives many and many opportunities to the most hardened sinners for repentance. But at length comes a time when His justice is provoked, and the inevitable punishment follows.
Cf. vii. 136.
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Pharaoh and his hosts were blotted out, and became as a tale of the past. Their story is an instructive warning and example to future generations.
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When 21:98 was revealed, warning the polytheists that all false gods will be in Hell, ’Abdullâh ibn Az-Ziba’ra, a poet who always attacked Islam, argued with the Prophet (ﷺ) that if what the verse says is true, then Jesus will be in Hell as well! The polytheists, who were present, laughed in agreement with this argument. The Prophet (ﷺ) replied that the verse was talking exclusively about idols, adding that Jesus himself did not ask anyone to worship him. Verse 21:101 was later revealed in support of the Prophet’s argument. Eventually, ’Abdullâh accepted Islam.
Jesus was a man, and a prophet to the Children of Israel, "though his own received him not." Some of the churches that were founded after him worshipped him as "God" and as "the son of God", as do the Trinitarian churches to the present day. The orthodox churches did so in the time of the holy Prophet. When the doctrine of Unity was renewed, and the false worship of others besides Allah was strictly prohibited, all false gods were condemned, e.g., at xxi. 98. The pagan Arabs looked upon Jesus as being in the same category as their false gods, and could not see why a foreign cult, or a foreign god, as they viewed him, should be considered better than their own gods or idols. There was no substance in this, but mere mockery, and verbal quibbling. Jesus was one of the greater prophets: he was not a god, nor was he responsible for the quibbling subtleties of the Athanasian Creed.
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Objecting to the Qur'anic condemnation of their idolatrous worship of angels - whom they describe here as "our deities" - the pagan Quraysh pointed to the parallel Christian worship of Jesus as "the son of God", and even as "God incarnate", and argued more or less thus: "The Qur'an states that Jesus was purely human - and yet the Christians, whom the same Qur'an describes as 'followers of earlier revelation' (ahl al-kitab), consider him divine. Hence, are we not rather justified in our worshipping angels, who are certainly superior to a mere human being?" The fallacy inherent in this "argument" is disposed of in the sequence.
Since the Qur'an condemns explicitly, and in many places, the deification of Jesus by the Christians, this unwarranted deification cannot be used as an argument in favour of the pagan worship of angels and, thus, against the Qur'an: in the words of Zamakhshari, such an argument amounts to "applying a false analogy to a false proposition" (qiyas basil bi-batil).
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A reference to the limited mission of the prophet Jesus, whose Gospel to the Jews only survives in uncertain fragmentary forms.
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Implying not only that Jesus was not a supernatural being, but that the angels, too, are mere created beings finite in their existence - as indicated by the phrase "succeeding one another" - and, therefore, utterly removed from the status of divinity (Baydawi).
Or “We could have easily produced angels from you …”
If it were said that the birth of Jesus without a father sets him above other prophets, the creation of angels without either father or mother would set them still higher, especially as angels do not eat and drink and are not subject to physical laws. But angels are not higher.
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Whereas most of the commentators regard the pronoun hu in innahu as relating to Jesus and, consequently, interpret the above phrase as "he is indeed a means to know [i.e., an indication of the coming of] the Last Hour", some authorities - e.g., Qatadah, Al-Hasan al-Basri and Sa'id ibn Jubayr (all of them quoted by Tabari, Baghawi and Ibn Kathir) - relate the pronoun to the Qur'an, and understand the phrase in the sense adopted in my rendering. The specific mention of the Last Hour in the above context is meant to stress man's ultimate responsibility before the Creator and, therefore, the fact that worship is due to Him alone: and so this parenthetic passage follows logically upon the mention of the false deification of Jesus.
This is understood to refer to the second coming of Jesus in the Last Days before the Resurrection, when he will destroy the false doctrines that pass under his name, and prepare the way for the universal acceptance of Islam, the Gospel of Unity and Peace, the Straight Way of the Qur-an.
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I.e., with divine revelation.
According to Tabari, the restrictive allusion to "some of that . . .", etc., bears on the realm of faith and morals alone, since it was not a part of Jesus' mission to deal with problems of his people's worldly life. This observation coincides with the image of Jesus forthcoming from the (admittedly fragmentary) description of his teachings available to us in the Synoptic Gospels.
True wisdom consists in understanding the unity of the Divine purpose and the Unity of the Divine Personality. The man Jesus came to reconcile the jarring sects in Israel, and his true teaching was just the same as that which was expounded in a wider form by Islam. He did not claim to be God: why should not the Christians follow the doctrine of Unity rather than what has become their ancestral and traditional custom?
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In verses 26-28 an appeal is made to the pagan Arabs, that Islam is their own religion, the religion of Abraham their ancestor; in verses 46-54, an appeal is made to the Jews that Islam is the same religion as was taught by Moses, and that they should not allow their leaders to make fools of them; in verses 57-65 an appeal is made to the Christians that Islam is the same religion as was taught by Jesus, and that they should give up their sectarian attitude and follow the universal religion, which shows the Straight Way.
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Sc., regarding the nature of Jesus and the inadmissibility of worshipping anyone but God: an allusion to subsequent developments in Christianity.
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