وَإِذْ قَالَ عِيسَى ٱبْنُ مَرْيَمَ يَٰبَنِىٓ إِسْرَٰٓءِيلَ إِنِّى رَسُولُ ٱللَّهِ إِلَيْكُم مُّصَدِّقًا لِّمَا بَيْنَ يَدَىَّ مِنَ ٱلتَّوْرَىٰةِ وَمُبَشِّرًۢا بِرَسُولٍ يَأْتِى مِنۢ بَعْدِى ٱسْمُهُۥٓ أَحْمَدُ فَلَمَّا جَآءَهُم بِٱلْبَيِّنَٰتِ قَالُوا۟ هَٰذَا سِحْرٌ مُّبِينٌ
Wa idh qāla ʿĪsa'bnu Maryama yā banī Isrāʾīla innī rasūlullāhi ilaykum muṣaddiqan limā bayna yadayya mina't-Tawrāti wa mubashshiran bi-rasūlin yaʾtī min baʿdī ismuhu Aḥmad, fa-lammā jāʾahum bi'l-bayyināti qālū hādhā siḥrun mubīn
"And when Jesus son of Mary (Maryam) said, 'O Children of Israel! I am God's messenger to you, confirming the Torah that came before me and giving good news of a messenger who will come after me, whose name is Aḥmad.' But when he came to them with clear proofs, they said, 'This is manifest sorcery.'"
- مُصَدِّقًا لِّمَا بَيْنَ يَدَىَّ — backwards: confirming what is before me.
- وَمُبَشِّرًۢا بِرَسُولٍ يَأْتِى مِنۢ بَعْدِى — forwards: giving good news of the one who comes after.
This is a definition of messengership as a link in a chain. A messenger stands between the one before him and the one after him; he is neither the beginning nor the end.
As was treated at al-Baqara 2/4, this is the claim the Qurʾān sets up for itself as well: "they believe in what has been sent down to you and in what was sent down before you". The idea of the chain is central to the Qurʾān's understanding of prophethood.
بَيْنَ يَدَىَّ — "between my two hands", that is, what is in front of me. It is an established idiom in Arabic and is used of time as well: what came first, what has stayed in the past. This is a logic the reverse of the English expression "the week before us": here "before" is the past, because the past is the side that can be seen.
مُصَدِّق — root ص-د-ق: to be true. Taṣdīq is to confirm a thing. And it is the same root as the ṣadaqū seen at al-Baqara 2/177. The fault in the second verse of the sūra (the divergence of word and deed) was the opposite of this root; here the same root occurs on the positive side.
مُبَشِّر — root ب-ش-ر. In the section on al-Muddaththir it was analysed that the centre of this root is the skin (bashara): both good news and scorching show on the skin. The bashīr is the one who brings news that changes the expression of the face. Good news, then, in the word's own logic, is news that changes the appearance of the one who receives it.
Root ح-م-د. This root was analysed in full in the section on al-Fātiḥa, and there three words were separated from one another:
- Commendation (madḥ) — can be given for anything, even for what was not gained by will.
- Thanks (shukr) — is given only in return for a good that has reached you.
- Ḥamd — is directed at beauties done by will (narrower than commendation), but does not require that the favour reach you (wider than thanks).
And there the derivatives of the root were enumerated: Muḥammad (much praised), Aḥmad, Maḥmūd (praised), Ḥamīd. I do not repeat that analysis here.
The only thing to add here is the matter of the pattern. The word Aḥmad comes on the أَفْعَل pattern, and in Arabic this pattern can be read in two directions:
| Reading | Meaning | Ground |
|---|---|---|
| In the direction of the agent | "The one who gives most ḥamd" | The afʿal pattern, as an elative, is derived from the agent of the verb: aʿlam (the one who knows most). |
| In the direction of the patient | "The one most praised" | The same pattern carries a passive sense in some words. |
These two directions were already recorded in the section on al-Fātiḥa. Both have been defended in the classical commentaries, and I adopt no firm preference between them. This much I can say: both readings agree with the work the name carries — the one who performs the ḥamd, and the one who is the subject of the ḥamd.
Throughout history this has been one of the most debated verses of the Qurʾān, and the subject of the debate is this: in which text is this word of Jesus to be found?
First: To make such a claim requires expertise in the linguistic strata of the texts we have to hand, in the history of their translation, and in the manuscript tradition. That is not the area of competence of this commentary.
Second: The strictest rule of the method (Method) is not to present as a transmitted report something that cannot be verified. A significant part of the comparisons made on this subject rests on arguments about language, and to pass over to one side without doing justice to those arguments would be to present to the reader as certain something of which I am not certain.
Third: The verse's own claim is not a claim to be found in an existing text. The verse transmits what Jesus said.
What is the classical approach? The general tendency of the exegetes is that this good news is present in the earlier books, and this view is supported by other verses of the Qurʾān — particularly by the prophet's being described at al-Aʿrāf 7/157 as one "whom they find written down with them in the Torah and the Gospel". I transmit this approach as a report; not as my own verification.
What can be drawn from the verse itself is this: the sūra speaks of a chain of messengership and says that the links of the chain are aware of one another. Its function within the sūra agrees with this: in the fifth verse a prophet was hurt by his own people; in the sixth a prophet gives good news and his good news is called "sorcery". Both scenes describe the same thing — the knowledge arrives, it is not accepted.
First a matter of word order: fa-lammā jāʾahum bi'l-bayyināt — "when he came to them with the clear proofs". Who came?
| Reading | Who came | Ground |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jesus | The subject of the sentence has been Jesus from the start; the pronoun returns to the nearest noun. |
| 2 | The messenger announced | The sentence comes immediately after the good news; and in the Qurʾān the charge of "sorcery" is frequently used against the Prophet. |
Both readings have been defended in the classical commentaries. I adopt no firm preference between them. Let me record this: as far as the flow of the sūra is concerned the difference is not great, because in either case the same thing is being described — the proof came, and it was called sorcery.
سِحْر — root س-ح-ر. In the concrete semantic field of the word lie showing a thing as other than it is, deceiving. And from the same root comes سَحَر (saḥar — the last part of the night, before dawn); according to the classical explanation, because it is the hour at which night and day mingle with one another and cannot be told apart.
مُّبِين — root ب-ي-ن. And there is a subtlety here. In Arabic this pattern can mean both "that which is manifest" and "that which makes manifest" — the same root was analysed in the section on al-Bayyina, and it was shown that at the centre of the root is distinguishing.
Now look at the sentence: "This is manifest sorcery." The charge does not reject the manifestness of the proof; it accepts the manifestness and changes its source. That is, the other side does not deny the extraordinariness of what it sees; it gives it another name.
This is an established reaction that the Qurʾān records. As was treated in the section on al-Muddaththir, the same charge was set up there too: "This is nothing but sorcery handed down" (al-Muddaththir 74/24). And it was recorded there that the verdict is given before the grounds; the ground is produced afterwards.
And also the choice of the word bayyināt: as was analysed in the section on Sūrat al-Bayyina, the bayyina is the proof that distinguishes. The verse thus records a paradox: the thing that distinguishes came, and it was not distinguished. The same paradox was set up at al-Bayyina 98/4 — the division came after the proof arrived.