يا أَيُّهَا الَّذينَ آمَنُوا اتَّقُوا اللَّهَ وَآمِنوا بِرَسولِهِ يُؤتِكُم كِفلَينِ مِن رَحمَتِهِ وَيَجعَل لَكُم نورًا تَمشونَ بِهِ وَيَغفِر لَكُم ۚ وَاللَّهُ غَفورٌ رَحيمٌ
O you who have faith! Be wary of Allah and have faith in His Apostle. He will grant you a double share of His mercy and give you a light to walk by, and forgive you, and Allah is all-forgiving, all-merciful.
EXEGESIS
It is the faithful that are being asked to Be wary of Allah and have faith in His Apostle. In other words, it is a call for complete and perfect faith devoid of any weakness or doubt. Or put differently, a call to faith upon faith, so that God may grant those who are such a double share of His mercy. Perfect faith would mean absolute and unconditional surrender to God’s commandments as, for example, described in 4:65-69.
Whereas the faithful are often asked to have faith in God and His Apostle, they are asked to be wary (ittaqū) only of God. Ittaqū is the imperative plural of the verb qū, to shield, safeguard, and protect (66:6). From it comes the word wiqāyah (shield) and taqwā, an oft-repeated Quran term for God-wariness. This taqwā is not so much the fear of God but rather an awe of Him that keeps one conscious of Him at all times and safeguards from spiritual harm. The faithful are asked to Be wary of (ittaqū) Allah with the wariness due to Him (tuqātihi) (3:102) and reminded that the remembrance of God acts as a veil against the ungodly (17:45), and conversely, shunning it allows the Devil access to one’s soul (43:36).
The word kiflayn in He will grant you a double share (kiflayn) is the dual form of kifl, which carries the meaning of having a share of something or a share in looking after someone or something.[1]
Kafālah is therefore a common term used for guardianship or custodianship. For Lady Mary, the mother of Prophet Jesus (a), for example, He charged (kaffala) Zachariah with her care (3:37), meaning God put Prophet Zachariah (a) in charge of looking after her, and he was answerable for her.[2] Likewise, having made Allah a guarantor (kafīl) over yourselves (16:91) means after you made a covenant in which you declared God as your guarantor, sponsor, and the one vouching for you as a witness. And the words, Commit it to my care (akfilnīhā) (38:23), means ‘make me the custodian for it’.
So kifl is usually positive and in this verse the double share (kiflayn) is interpreted by most to either mean the good of the world and the hereafter, which the faithful are asked to pray for in 2:201, or successive blessings (niʿam) that are consecutive, uninterrupted, and incessant.[3]
And it is also possible that there are no two distinct reasons for the double share except that it is promised for those who rise above ordinary faith and are committed to Islam. The faithful from the People of the Book, for example, are promised reward two times for their patience (28:54). See Review of Tafsīr Literature.
But kifl can also carry a negative connotation where the share is a burden, as in, whoever intercedes for an evil cause shall share its burden (kifl) (4:85).
Of His mercy denotes His reward (thawāb) just like Allah’s grace in verses 21 and 29. In other verses where mercy is mentioned along with forgiveness, it is usually interpreted as paradise (cf. 3:157, 4:96) – also from God’s reward – and in verse 21 forgiveness and paradise are mentioned separately as from His grace.
And give you a light to walk by certainly includes the light of the faithful on the Day of Judgement that was discussed under verses 12-13 and mentioned again in verse 19, but there is no reason to limit it to the hereafter only. God gives the faithful a light to walk by in this world as well: Is he who was lifeless, then We gave him life and provided him with a light by which he walks among the people, like one who dwells in a manifold darkness which he cannot leave? (6:122).
And forgive you, and Allah is all-forgiving, all-merciful means besides being given mercy (reward) and a light to walk by (guidance), their past wrongs will also be erased such that they will have only good to look forward to and nothing to worry about or fear.
EXPOSITION
A light to walk by means to be guided by it. This is because when one walks in the dark, one simply gropes in fear, with no sense of direction, even if one knows the desirable destination. Hence, the light in this world has been interpreted as the Quran, or the righteous Imams, or even both, using verses such as Certainly there has come to you a light from Allah, and a manifest book (5:15), and So have faith in Allah and His Apostle and the light which We have sent down (64:8). And also in traditions, such as the ḥadīth al-thaqalayn from the Prophet: ‘I leave behind two weighty matters, the book of God and my household. If you hold on to them, you will never stray after me.’[4] And in a tradition from Imam al-Ṣādiq (a), he said: ‘And give you a light [means] an Imam whom you can follow.’[5] See also the Review of Tafsīr Literature for verse 12 where this meaning was first explained.
A light to walk by also has an appeal when the light is understood as a righteous guide because one is able to emulate and find guidance by simply walking in their footsteps.
With this light the God-wary can see the truth without any veils of confusion – an ability not easily accessible to other ordinary faithful: O you who have faith! If you are wary of Allah, He shall appoint a criterion (furqān) for you (8:29), the criterion being a form of divinely-inspired knowledge and perceptivity to distinguish between truth and falsehood.
This light can also refer to the self-disclosure of God’s attributes in the heart of the faithful and thus to the light of spiritual guidance from God.[6]
And in the hereafter, this light also guides the faithful from their places of resurrection and gathering to the gates of and entry into paradise. See the Review of Tafsīr Literature for verse 12 on the rightful Imams as the guiding light of the faithful on Judgement Day.
REVIEW OF TAFSĪR LITERATURE
Zamakhsharī and others have said the words O you who have faith could be an address to the People of the Book to say: O you who have faith in Moses (a) and Jesus (a), Be wary of Allah and have faith in His Apostle, meaning Prophet Muhammad (s). And in exchange, He will grant you a double share of His mercy … and forgive you for your past faithlessness and sins.[7] Ibn Kathīr supports this interpretation by a prophetic tradition that states among those who will receive their reward twice is ‘a believer from the People of the Book who has been a true believer in his prophet and then believes in me’.[8]
Such an interpretation seems motivated by the fact that it promises a double share, and since the People of the Book already have faith in the previous prophets, therefore if they believed in the Final Apostle as well, then they deserve a double share of reward. Zamakhsharī may have also found support for his understanding from the verses: Those to whom We gave the book before it [the Quran] are the ones who believe in it, and when it is recited to them, they say: ‘We believe in it. It is indeed the truth from our Lord. Indeed we were muslims [even] before it [came].’ Those will be given their reward two times for their patience (28:52-54).
But those mentioned in 28:52-54 cannot be the same as those mentioned in the verse under discussion, firstly because those are acknowledged as already embracing Islam: they say: ‘We believe in it …’ (28:53), whereas these are still being invited to have faith in His Apostle. So, O you who have faith would not apply to them. Secondly, if we interpret O you who have faith as addressing the Medinan Jews and Christians then we would also have to assume that the opening words in the following verse, So that the People of the Book may know means: So that the rest of the People of the Book who refuse to have faith in the Apostle may know. And they would not be encompassed by the words O you who have faith in this verse. Yet there is no indication of such a meaning in the next verse. And finally, the phrase O you who have faith is used copiously in the Quran but never for the People of the Book as ‘O you who have faith in Moses (a) and Jesus (a)’, as some of the exegetes have opined. Even for those who did believe in Prophet Muhammad (s) amongst them, when referred to exclusively, they are addressed as those who have faith from the People of the Book (3:113-114, 3:199).
Makārim Shīrāzī has rightly argued for the complete opposite and noted the reason why the Muslim faithful deserve the double share is because, unlike the People of the Book, it is they who believe in the Apostle of God, the Quran, as well as all previous prophets and scriptures[9] (cf. 2:136, 2:285, 3:84).
What further confirms the addressee here as the Muslims only is a report that even Zamakhsharī, besides others, relates, from Saʿīd ibn Jubayr, that when God’s Apostle sent (his cousin) Jaʿfar ibn Abī Ṭālib to invite King Negus (Najāshī) to Islam and the latter accepted it, a group of forty men from the people of Negus, who had believed along with him, accompanied Jaʿfar back to Medina to meet with the Apostle of God. Upon their arrival, they found the Muslims an impoverished lot, suffering in need. So they returned to Ethiopia and came back with their wealth, distributing it to the Muslims, and God revealed concerning them, Those to whom We gave the book before it [the Quran] are the ones who believe in it … Those will be given their reward two times … and spend out of what We have provided them (28:52-54). Their spending being what they gave away to the Muslims.
When the People of the Book heard this – from those who had not believed – they began boasting over the Muslims and saying: ‘O community of Muslims, as for those who believe from amongst us, in our book and your book, for him is the reward two times; this means one who believes from amongst us shall have [at least] a [single] reward like yours; so in what way are you better off than us?’ So this verse was revealed, O you who have faith! Be wary of Allah and have faith in His Apostle. He will grant you a double share … And thus, the tradition concludes, God gave the Muslims a double reward too and added for them the light and forgiveness and then said: So that the People of the Book may know … (verse 29).[10]
Even if we were to doubt the hagiographic nature of this report, the fact that it is widely quoted by exegetes at least verifies that the general and acceptable understanding amongst exegetes is that while 28:52-54 is specific to the faithful who converted from the People of the Book, this verse covers the faithful in general and is not addressed to the People of the Book.
In addition, the view by some exegetes that the double share in this verse refers to one reward for faith and another for righteous actions, is wrong. This is because faith and righteous action cannot be viewed as mutually exclusive in Islam. They go hand-in-hand as one, and neither is acceptable without the other.
[1] Lane, k-f-l.
[2] Raghib, k-f-l.
[3] Raghib, k-f-l.
[4] Tirmidhi, 5/663, h. 3788.
[5] Kafi, 1/430, h. 86.
[6] Nasr, p. 1340.
[7] Zamakhshari, 4/482.
[8] Ibn Kathir, 8/63, from Bukhari and Muslim.
[9] Nemuneh, 23/395.
[10] Zamakhshari, 4/483; Tabrisi, 9/244; Abu al-Futuh, 19/47-48; Alusi, 14/192; Mizan, 19/176.