Your sins will He forgive you, and He will bring you into gardens beneath whose shades the rivers flow-into charming abodes in the gardens of Eden:  This shall be the great bliss.-

And other things which ye desire will he bestow, Help from God and speedy conquest!3 Bear thou these tidings to the faithful.

O ye who believe! be helpers (ansars) of God; as said Jesus the son of Mary to his apostles, “Who will come to the help of God?” “We,” said the apostles, “will be helpers of God.”  And a part of the children of Israel believed, and a part believed not.  But to those who believed gave we the upperhand over their foes, and soon did they prove victorious.

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1 Addressed to the Muslims who had turned their backs to the enemy at Ohod.

2 Muhammad had no doubt heard that Jesus had promised a Paracletos, John xvi. 7.  This title, understood by him, probably from the similarity of sound, as equivalent to Periclytos, he applied to himself with reference to his own name Muhammad (i.e. praised, glorified) from the same root and of the same meaning as Ahmad, also one of the Prophet’s names.  It may be here remarked that the name Muhammad, if pronounced Muhammed, “might be understood by an Arab in an active instead of a passive sense.” (Lane, Kor. p. 52.) Other passages of Scripture understood by Muslims of their Prophet are Deut. xxxiii. 2, where Paran is said to mean Islam; Isai. xxi. 6, where the “rider on the ass” is Jesus, the “rider on the camel” Muhammad; Matt. xx. 1-16, where the morning, noon, and even are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; John iv. 21; 1 John iv. 2, 3, where Muhammad is said to be “the spirit that is of God,” because he proclaimed that Jesus was a true man and not God.

3 If this allude to a meditated attack on the Banu Nadir (see Sura [cii.] lix.) we have a clue to the probable date of the Sura.  The promise, however, may be general.  But the tone of verse 9 evidently points to a period when, as at Medina, the prospects of Islam were becoming hopeful.

SURA LVII.-IRON [XCIX.]

Medina.1-29 Verses

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

All that is in the Heavens and in the Earth praiseth God, and He is the
Mighty, the Wise!

His the Kingdom of the Heavens and of the Earth; He maketh alive and killeth; and He hath power over all things!

He is the first and the last; the Seen and the Hidden;2 and He knoweth all things!

It is He who in six days created the Heavens and the Earth, then ascended His throne.  He knoweth that which entereth the earth, and that which goeth forth from it, and what cometh down from Heaven, and what mounteth up to it; and wherever ye are, He is with you; and God beholdeth all your actions!

His the kingdom of the Heavens and the Earth; and to God shall all things return!