al-Raʿd 13:32-38

"Messengers before you were mocked as well… He who stands over every soul with what it has earned (is he like another?)… This is the likeness of the Garden promised to those who guard themselves: rivers flow beneath it, and its produce and its shade are unceasing."

أُكُلُهَا دَآئِمٌ وَظِلُّهَا — two things unceasing: the produce and the shade.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the sūra's own verses: in the fourth verse the difference in produce (ukul) was named as a testing; in the fifteenth verse the shadow was counted among those that prostrate. The thirty-fifth verse gives both of them as lasting. It is a weave that can be verified within the sūra.

A note, per the method (Method): the verse issues no blanket ruling about those who were given the Book — it says that some of them rejoice, and that among the parties there are some who deny part of it. The same care was treated at al-ʿAnkabūt 29/47; I rely on that treatment.

وَلَقَدْ أَرْسَلْنَا رُسُلًا مِّن قَبْلِكَ وَجَعَلْنَا لَهُمْ أَزْوَٰجًا وَذُرِّيَّةً (38) — "We sent messengers before you as well, and gave them wives and offspring."

This answer was treated at al-Furqān 25/20 (yaʾkulūna'ṭ-ṭaʿāma wa yamshūna fi'l-aswāq) and at al-Anbiyāʾ 21/7-8. Three sūras answer the same objection with the same structure: that the messengers were human beings is set down not as a defect but as the rule.

وَمَا كَانَ لِرَسُولٍ أَن يَأْتِىَ بِـَٔايَةٍ إِلَّا بِإِذْنِ ٱللَّهِ لِكُلِّ أَجَلٍ كِتَابٌ — and the answer to the demand for a miracle: the authority does not lie with the messenger. The same demand had occurred twice at al-Raʿd 13/7 and 13/27; here it comes a third time and closes with a ruling.