Ali Quli Qarai, The Qur’ān with a Phrase-by-Phrase English Translation (2005)
how many generations We have destroyed before them
who will not come back to them?
32 And all of them will indeed be presented before Us.
33 A sign for them is the dead earth,
which We revive
and out of it bring forth grain,
so they eat of it.
34 And We make in it orchards of date palms
and vines,
and We cause springs to gush forth in it,
35 so that they may eat of its fruit
and what their hands have cultivated.1
Will they not then give thanks?
36 Immaculate is He who has created all the kinds 2
of what the earth grows,
and of themselves,
and of what they do not know.
37 And a sign for them is the night,
which We strip of daylight,
and, behold, they find themselves in the dark!
38 And the sun runs on
to its place of rest:3
1 Or ‘and their hands did not cultivate it.’ That is, it is We who produce the fruits, not their hands. Cf. 27:60 and 56:64.
2 Or, ‘all the pairs.’
3 Or ‘it has no place of rest.’ This is in accordance with the alternate reading ‘lā mustaqarra lahā.’ Ṭabrisī in Majma‘ al-Bayān narrates a tradition which ascribes the reading lā mustaqarra lahā to the Imams ‘Ali b. al-Ḥusayn, Muḥammad al-Bāqir, and Ja‘far al-Ṣādiq, as well as to a number of the early exegetes such as Ibn ‘Abbās, Ibn Mas‘ūd, ‘Ikrimah, and ‘Aṭā’ b. Abī Rabāḥ. See Mu‘jam al-Qirā’āt al-Qur’āniyyah, v, 208, for further sources of this reading. The reading li mustaqarrin lahā seems to have been suggested and reinforced by the popular astronomical notions of the age.
