Muhammad Asad, The Message of the Qur’ān; Translated and Explained by Muhammad Asad (1980)
Nay, but His is all that is in the heavens and on earth; all things devoutly obey His will. (117) The Originator is He of the heavens and the earth: and when He wills a thing to be, He but says unto it, “Be” – and it is.
(118) And [only] those who are devoid of knowledge say, “Why does God not speak unto us, nor is a [miraculous] sign shown to us?” Even thus, like unto what they say, spoke those who lived before their time:97 their hearts are all alike. Indeed, We have made all the signs manifest unto people who are endowed with inner certainty.
(119) Verily, We have sent thee [O Prophet] with the truth, as a bearer of glad tidings and a Warner: and thou shalt not be held accountable for those who are destined for the blazing fire.
(120) For, never will the Jews be pleased with thee, nor yet the Christians, unless thou follow their own creeds. Say: “Behold, God’s guidance is the only true guidance.”
And, indeed, if thou shouldst follow their errant views after all the knowledge that has come unto thee, thou wouldst have none to protect thee from God, and none to bring thee succour.
(121) Those unto whom We have vouchsafed the divine writ [and who] follow it as it ought to be followed 98 – it is they who [truly] believe in it; whereas all who choose to deny its truth – it is they, they who are the losers!
(122) O children of Israel! Remember those blessings of Mine with which I graced you, and how I favoured you above all other people; (123) and remain conscious of [the coming of] a Day when no human being shall in the least avail another, nor shall ransom be accepted from any of them, nor shall intercession be of any use to them, and none shall be succoured.99
exclusively to God – connotes His utter remoteness from any imperfection and any similarity, however tenuous, with any created being or thing.
97 I.e., people who were not able to perceive the intrinsic truth of the messages conveyed to them by the prophets, but rather insisted on a miraculous “demonstration” that those messages really came from God, and thus failed to benefit from them. – This verse obviously connects with verse 108 above and, thus, refers to the objections of the Jews and the Christians to the message of the Qurʾān. (See also note 29 on 74:52.)
98 Or: “apply themselves to it with true application” – i.e., try to absorb its meaning and to understand its spiritual design.
99 See 2:48. In the above context, this refers, specifically, to the belief of the Jews that their descent from Abraham would “ransom” them on the Day of Judgment – a belief which is refuted in the next verse.
