Taysīr al-Karīm al-Raḥmān fī tafsīr kalām al-Mannān, by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Nāṣir al-Saʿdī (d. 1376 AH / 1956 CE). A modern commentary in plain Arabic that states the sense of each verse and the lesson drawn from it, without chains or digressions.
The complete commentary on God’s favours, the table and the questioning (5:110-120), covering 5:110 to 5:120.
On 5:110
When God said: O Jesus son of Mary, remember My favour upon you and upon your mother, that is, remember it with your heart and your tongue, and discharge its due in gratitude to your Lord, since He bestowed upon you favours He bestowed upon no one else: when I supported you with the Holy Spirit, that is, when I strengthened you with the spirit and the revelation which purified you and made you grow, so that you came to have strength for carrying out God’s command and calling to His path. It was also said that what is meant by the Holy Spirit is Gabriel (peace be upon him), and that God aided him through him, through his constant attendance upon him and his steadying him in trying situations. You spoke to people in the cradle and in maturity: what is meant by speaking here is not the ordinary speaking which is mere talk; rather what is meant by it is the speech by which both the speaker and the one addressed benefit, namely the call to God. Jesus (peace be upon him) had of this what his brothers among the messengers of firm resolve had, namely speaking in the state of maturity with the message, the call to good and the forbidding of evil; and he was distinguished from them in that he spoke to people in the cradle, saying: Indeed I am the servant of God; He has given me the Book and made me a prophet, and He has made me blessed wherever I may be, and has enjoined upon me prayer and alms-giving as long as I live (19:30–31), to the end of the verse.
And when I taught you the Book and wisdom. The Book includes the earlier scriptures, and especially the Torah, for he was among the most knowledgeable of the prophets of the Children of Israel concerning it after Moses; and it includes the Gospel which God sent down to him. Wisdom is knowledge of the secrets of the law, its benefits and its underlying purposes, excellence in calling and teaching, and attending to what ought to be done in the manner in which it ought to be done. And when you created out of clay the form of a bird, that is, a bird fashioned in shape with no spirit in it, then breathed into it and it became a bird by My leave; and you healed the one born blind, who has neither sight nor eye, and the leper by My leave; and when you brought forth the dead by My leave. These are clear signs and dazzling miracles before which physicians and others are powerless; God supported Jesus with them and strengthened his call by them. And when I restrained the Children of Israel from you when you came to them with clear proofs, and those of them who disbelieved said, when the truth came to them supported by the clear proofs that necessitate faith in it: This is nothing but manifest sorcery (5:110). They resolved to kill Jesus and strove to do so, but God restrained their hands from him, protected him from them and kept him safe.
These, then, are favours which God graciously bestowed upon His servant and messenger Jesus son of Mary, and He called him to give thanks for them and to discharge their due; and he (upon him be blessings and peace) discharged them most completely, and was patient as his brothers among the messengers of firm resolve were patient.
On 5:111
That is: and remember My favour upon you when I made easy for you followers and helpers, for I inspired the disciples, that is, I put it into them and disposed their hearts to faith in Me and in My messenger; or I revealed to them through your tongue, that is, I commanded them by the revelation that came to you from God. They responded to that and submitted and said: We believe, so bear witness that we are Muslims (5:111). So they combined outward submission (islām) and compliance through righteous deeds with inward faith, which brings its possessor out of hypocrisy and out of weakness of faith.
On 5:112
The disciples (ḥawāriyyūn) are the helpers, as Jesus son of Mary said to the disciples: Who are my helpers towards God? The disciples said: We are the helpers of God (61:14).
When the disciples said: O Jesus son of Mary, is your Lord able to send down to us a table from heaven?, that is, a table with food upon it. This on their part was not out of any doubt concerning God’s power and His ability to do that; it was rather by way of a request and courtesy from them. And since asking for signs of one’s own proposing is contrary to submission to the truth, and these words issuing from the disciples might have given that impression, Jesus (peace be upon him) admonished them and said: Fear God, if you are believers (5:112), for the faith a believer has carries him to constant God-fearing and to submitting to God’s command, and he does not ask for signs of his own proposing, of which he does not know what will come after them.
On 5:113
So the disciples informed him that their purpose was not this meaning; rather they had righteous purposes, and it was on account of their need for it. They said: We desire to eat of it, which is evidence that they were in need of it; and that our hearts be at rest in faith when we see the signs with our own eyes, so that faith becomes the very certainty of sight (ʿayn al-yaqīn), just as the Friend of God, Abraham (upon him be blessings and peace), asked his Lord to show him how He gives life to the dead: He said: Have you not believed? He said: Yes, but so that my heart may be at rest (2:260). The servant is in need of increase in knowledge, certainty and faith at every moment, and for this reason they said: and that we may know that you have told us the truth, that is, that we may know the truth of what you have brought, that it is real and true; and that we may be among the witnesses to it (5:113), so that it may be a benefit for those who come after us: we bear witness to it for you, the proof is established and additional demonstration is obtained thereby.
On 5:114
When Jesus (upon him be blessings and peace) heard that and knew their purpose, he granted their request in that matter and said: O God, our Lord, send down to us a table from heaven, that it may be a festival for us, for the first of us and the last of us, and a sign from You, that is, that the time of its descent may be a festival and a season by which this mighty sign is remembered, so that it is preserved and not forgotten with the passing of time and the recurrence of the years, just as God, Exalted, made the festivals of the Muslims and their rites reminders of His signs, pointers to the ways of the messengers and their upright paths and to His favour and beneficence towards them. And provide for us, for You are the best of providers (5:114), that is, make it provision for us. So Jesus (peace be upon him) asked for its descent and that it be for these two benefits: the benefit of religion, in that it be an abiding sign, and the benefit of this world, namely that it be provision.
On 5:115
God said: I am going to send it down to you; but whoever of you disbelieves after that, I shall punish him with a punishment with which I do not punish anyone among the worlds (5:115), because he witnessed the dazzling sign and disbelieved out of obstinacy and wrongdoing, and so deserved the painful punishment and the severe chastisement.
Know that God, Exalted, promised that He would send it down and threatened them with this warning if they disbelieved, but He did not mention that He sent it down. It is possible that He did not send it down because they did not choose that, and indicating this is the fact that it is not mentioned in the Gospel that the Christians have in their hands, nor has it any existence there. And it is possible that it descended as God promised, for He does not break His promise, and that the absence of its mention in the Gospels in their hands is part of the portion of which they were reminded but which they forgot; or that it was not mentioned in the Gospel at all, but was rather handed down among them, the later generations transmitting it from the earlier, so that God was content with that in place of mentioning it in the Gospel. Indicating this meaning are His words: and that we may be among the witnesses to it (5:113). And God knows best the reality of the matter.
On 5:116
And when God said: O Jesus son of Mary, did you say to people: Take me and my mother as two gods besides God? This is a rebuke to the Christians who said that God is the third of three! God says these words to Jesus, and Jesus disavows it and says: Glory be to You, far above these ugly words and above what does not befit You; it is not for me to say what I have no right to, that is, it is not proper or fitting for me to say anything that is not among my attributes or my rights. For no created being, neither the angels brought near, nor the prophets sent as messengers, nor anyone else, has any right or entitlement to the station of divinity; rather all are servants who are governed, creatures who are subjected, needy and powerless. If I had said it, You would have known it; You know what is in my self, and I do not know what is in Your Self. You know best what has issued from me, for You are the Knower of the unseen. This is part of the perfect courtesy of the Messiah (upon him be blessings and peace) in addressing his Lord: he (peace be upon him) did not say, I did not say anything of that; rather he spoke words that deny of himself the saying of any statement contrary to his noble station, and that this is among impossible things, and he declared his Lord utterly far above that, and referred knowledge back to the Knower of the unseen and the seen.
On 5:117
Then he stated explicitly what he had commanded the Children of Israel, and said: I said to them nothing except what You commanded me: for I am a servant who follows Your command, not one who ventures boldly against Your majesty; Worship God, my Lord and your Lord, that is, I commanded them nothing but the worship of God alone and the devoting of religion sincerely to Him, which includes the prohibition of taking me and my mother as two gods besides God and the declaration that I am a servant who has a Lord: just as He is your Lord, so He is my Lord. And I was a witness over them as long as I remained among them: I bear witness as to who carried out this command and who did not carry it out. Then when You took me up, You were the Watcher over them, that is, the One acquainted with their secrets and their inner thoughts; and You are Witness over all things (5:117), in knowledge, hearing and sight: Your knowledge has encompassed all things known, Your hearing all things heard, and Your sight all things seen; so You are the One who recompenses Your servants for what You know in them of good and evil.
On 5:118
If You punish them, they are Your servants: and You are more merciful to them than they are to themselves, and more knowing of their states; so were it not that they are rebellious servants, You would not punish them. And if You forgive them, You are the Mighty, that is, Your forgiveness issues from complete might and power, not like one who forgives and pardons out of incapacity and lack of power; the Wise (5:118), in that it is among the requirements of Your wisdom that You forgive whoever brings the means of forgiveness.
On 5:119
God said, making plain the condition of His servants on the Day of Resurrection, which of them is the successful and which the ruined, which the wretched and which the blessed: This is the Day when the truthful will benefit from their truthfulness. The truthful are those whose deeds, words and intentions were upright upon the straight path and the right guidance; on the Day of Resurrection they find the fruit of that truthfulness when God settles them in a seat of truth with a Sovereign Omnipotent. For this reason He said: For them are Gardens beneath which rivers flow, abiding therein forever; God is pleased with them and they are pleased with Him. That is the great success (5:119). The liars are their opposite: they will find the harm of their lying and their fabrication and the fruit of their corrupt deeds.
On 5:120
To God belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth and whatever is in them, because He is the Creator of them both and the Governor of all that, by His decree of destiny, His decree of law and His decree of recompense. For this reason He said: and He has power over all things (5:120): nothing is beyond Him; rather all things are submissive to His will and subjected to His command.
About this text
This is a complete English rendering of Taysīr al-Karīm al-Raḥmān fī tafsīr kalām al-Mannān on these verses, prepared for this website from the public-domain Arabic text (tafsir.app, src=saadi). Nothing is abridged: every opinion, every report with its chain of transmission, every verse of poetry and every grammatical note is translated. Qur’anic quotations are in bold; the translator’s own notes are confined to the numbered footnotes and identify names, terms and variant readings only. A second translator has not checked the rendering, and the Arabic is linked so that any passage can be compared. The modern editors’ apparatus is not part of the classical text and is not translated.
God’s favours, the table and the questioning (5:110-120): all commentaries · The classical commentaries