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al-Māʾida 5:87-88

The Qurʾān · Sūra 5: al-Māʾida · verses 87-88

This commentary was written by Claude (Anthropic); it carries no religious authority and should be checked against the classical sources.

5/87-88

يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ لَا تُحَرِّمُوا۟ طَيِّبَٰتِ مَآ أَحَلَّ ٱللَّهُ لَكُمْ وَلَا تَعْتَدُوٓا۟

"O you who believe! Do not forbid the good things God has made lawful to you, and do not transgress. God does not love those who transgress."

The direction of the prohibition

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the subject of the verb: the one addressed by the prohibition is the person who forbids himself what is lawful. That is, the verse aims not at laxity but at excessive strictness.

And two verbs are joined in the same sentence: lā tuḥarrimū and lā taʿtadū. That is, narrowing what is lawful counts too as an iʿtidāʾ, a going beyond the bound.

The root ع-د-و: to cross a limit, to trespass. The word had occurred earlier in this sūra in the sense of enmity (ʿadāwa) (5/64, 5/82).

The same line was treated at al-Aʿrāf 7/31-32 (qul man ḥarrama zīnata'llāhi'llatī akhraja li-ʿibādih) and at al-Taḥrīm 66/1 (lima tuḥarrimu mā aḥalla'llāhu lak); I rely on that treatment.

وَكُلُوا۟ مِمَّا رَزَقَكُمُ ٱللَّهُ حَلَٰلًا طَيِّبًا (88) — and two qualifications together: ḥalālan (free by the ruling) and ṭayyiban (clean or pleasant in itself).


The whole of Sūrat al-Māʾida