يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ لَيَبْلُوَنَّكُمُ ٱللَّهُ بِشَىْءٍ مِّنَ ٱلصَّيْدِ تَنَالُهُۥٓ أَيْدِيكُمْ وَرِمَاحُكُمْ لِيَعْلَمَ ٱللَّهُ مَن يَخَافُهُۥ بِٱلْغَيْبِ
"O you who believe! God will surely test you with some game within reach of your hands and your spears — so as to make known who fears Him though he does not see Him."
The qualification should be recorded: tanāluhū aydīkum wa rimāḥukum — "which your hands and your spears can reach".
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is this qualification: the test is set up not with something out of reach but with something precisely within reach. And the ground is given openly: li-yaʿlama'llāhu man yakhāfuhū bi'l-ghayb — the one who fears without seeing.
| Option | Content |
|---|---|
| 1 | Jazāʾun mithlu mā qatala mina'n-naʿam — an animal equivalent to what he killed, as an offering reaching the Kaʿba |
| 2 | Kaffāratun ṭaʿāmu masākīn — feeding the poor |
| 3 | Aw ʿadlu dhālika ṣiyāmā — the equivalent of that in fasting |
And the arbiters are specified: yaḥkumu bihī dhawā ʿadlin minkum — two just men. That is, the person does not assess the equivalence on his own.
Li-yadhūqa wabāla amrih — "that he may taste the weight of his affair". Wabāl (و-ب-ل): heavy, hard to digest; wābil — rain in large drops.
On the legal details (how the equivalence is to be measured, the case of unintentional killing, the number of fast days) the schools of law differ; no preference is adopted.
عَفَا ٱللَّهُ عَمَّا سَلَفَ — and pardon is declared for the past. The same expression occurs in other places in the Qurʾān besides al-Māʾida 5/95; here it is announced plainly that the ruling is not applied retrospectively.
5/96 — أُحِلَّ لَكُمْ صَيْدُ ٱلْبَحْرِ وَطَعَامُهُۥ مَتَٰعًا لَّكُمْ وَلِلسَّيَّارَةِ ۖ وَحُرِّمَ عَلَيْكُمْ صَيْدُ ٱلْبَرِّ مَا دُمْتُمْ حُرُمًا
The distinction is plain: game of the sea is permitted, game of the land is forbidden for the duration of consecration. Mā dumtum ḥuruman — a qualification of duration.
Wa li's-sayyāra (س-ي-ر): travellers, a caravan. That is, the conditions of travel too are named in the reasoning of the ruling.