Tafsir at-Tabari: Jami' al-Bayan - Dar al-Tarbiyah wa al-Turath Edition

192 - Yūnus b. ʿAbd al-Aʿlā narrated to me, saying: Ibn Wahb informed us, saying: ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Zayd said regarding the statement of God, "the path of those upon whom You have bestowed favor," he said: The Prophet, peace and blessings of God be upon him, and those with him. (1)

Abū Jaʿfar said: In this verse is clear evidence that obedience to God, majestic is His praise, is not attained by the obedient except through God bestowing it as a favor upon them and granting them success in it. Do they not hear Him saying: "the path of those upon whom You have bestowed favor," thereby attributing all of their guidance, obedience, and worship to the fact that it is a favor from Him upon them?

If someone were to say: Where is the completion of this statement? For you know that when someone says to another, "I have bestowed a favor upon you," it necessitates stating what the favor bestowed upon him is. So where is that statement in His saying: "the path of those upon whom You have bestowed favor"? And what is that favor which He bestowed upon them?

It is said to him: We have already provided the explanation—in what has preceded of this book of ours—regarding the Arabs' practice in their speech of sufficing with one part over another, if the apparent part indicates the hidden part and suffices for it. His saying: "the path of those upon whom You have bestowed favor" is of that nature. Because the command of God, majestic is His praise, to His servants to ask Him for help, and their seeking guidance from Him to the straight path, having preceded His saying: "the path of those upon whom You have bestowed favor"—which is an clarification of the straight path and a substitute for it—it was known that the favor which God bestowed upon those whose path He commanded us to ask for guidance to, is the upright methodology and the straight path, the explanation of whose interpretation we have just provided. Thus, the apparent aspect of what appeared of that—along with the close proximity of the two phrases—dispensed with the need to repeat it.

As Nābighat Banī Dhubyān said: As if you were among the camels of Banū Uqaysh ... rattled behind his hind legs with a dried skin (2)

(1) Narration 192 - This chain of transmission preceded in: 185. As for the text of the narration, it is in Ibn Kathīr (1/53). He said after these narrations: "And the preceding interpretation (Tafsir) from Ibn ʿAbbās is broader and more comprehensive." He means report 188.
(2) His Dīwān: 58, Sībawayh 1/375, Majāz al-Qurʾān: 101, al-Khizāna 2/314. This poetry was said by al-Nābigha to ʿUyayna ibn Ḥiṣn al-Fazārī. Banū Uqaysh: they are Banū Uqaysh ibn ʿUbayd. It is said: a branch of Ashjaʿ. It is said: a clan from Yemen whose camels have extreme wildness. It is said: they are a clan of the jinn, as they claim. And qaqʿaʿa (clattered): rattled something dry so a sound is heard from it. And al-shann: the worn-out waterskin. He describes ʿUyayna as cowardly, weak, and severely terrified, as if he were a wildly skittish camel that, when it hears the sound of a dry waterskin clattering, bolts.

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