in. This is a command conveying an emphatic threat: say to them, “Continue doing what you are doing; indeed, I am carrying out what my Lord, Most High, has commanded me.” “You will soon know who will have the final abode”—that is, Paradise. Hamzah and al-Kisa’i recited it here and in Surat al-Qasas as “will be,” with the masculine form; the others recited it with the feminine form, in agreement with “final outcome.” “Indeed, the wrongdoers will not succeed.” Ibn ‘Abbas said: Its meaning is that whoever disbelieves in Me and associates partners with Me will not attain happiness. Al-Dahhak said: They will not triumph.

His saying, Most High: “They set aside for Allah a share of the crops and livestock He has created,” to the end of the verse. The polytheists used to assign Allah a share of their crops, livestock, fruits, and all their other wealth, and they assigned another share to the idols. What they assigned to Allah they distributed among guests and the needy, while what they assigned to the idols they spent on the idols and their attendants. If anything from the share they had assigned to Allah, Most High, fell into the share of the idols, they left it there, saying, “Allah has no need of this.” But if anything from the share of the idols fell into what they had assigned to Allah, they returned it to the idols, saying, “They are in need of it.” If anything from what they had assigned to Allah was destroyed or diminished, they did not concern themselves with it; but if anything from what they had assigned to the idols was destroyed or diminished, they made it up from what they had assigned to Allah. This is the meaning of His saying, Most High: “They set aside for Allah a share of the crops and livestock He has created”—that is, brought into being. The wording is abbreviated; its full sense is: They assigned a share to Allah and a share to their partners.

“They said, according to their claim, ‘This is for Allah.’” Al-Kisa’i recited “according to their claim” with the letter zay pronounced with a dammah, while the others recited it with a fathah; both are valid dialectal forms. It means a statement without any reality behind it. “And this is for our partners”—meaning, the idols. “But what was assigned to their partners does not reach Allah, while what was assigned to Allah reaches their partners.” Its meaning is what we have mentioned: they would make up what they had assigned to the idols from what they had assigned to Allah, but would not (2) make up what they had assigned to Allah from what they had assigned to the idols. Qatadah said: When they were struck by a year of famine, they drew upon and ate from what they had allotted to Allah, but preserved what they had allotted to their partners and did not eat any of it (3). “Evil is their judgment”—that is, evil is what they do (4).

“Thus their partners made the killing of their children seem fair to many of the polytheists.” That is, just as they made the prohibition of crops and livestock seem fair to them, so too their partners made the killing of their children seem fair to many of the polytheists. Mujahid said: Their partners—that is, their devils—made it seem good and fair to them to bury their daughters alive out of fear of poverty. The devils were called partners because the people obeyed them in disobedience to Allah, and the partners were attributed to them because they had taken them as such.

Al-Kalbi said: Their partners were the custodians of their deities, who used to make the killing of children seem fair to the disbelievers. Thus, a man