, as all agree. Indeed, someone might say, “His command came.” This is precisely what the Muʿtazilah, who say that the Quran is created, maintain: they interpret this verse as meaning that His command comes. Why, then, should it not be permissible to interpret the Quran’s coming as the coming of its reward? His words, “Al-Baqarah and Āl ʿImrān will come,” would thus mean that their reward comes, and their reward is created.

More than one scholar has explained this meaning, clarifying that the words:

“Al-Baqarah and Āl ʿImrān will come”

mean that their reward will come. They did so to answer the Jahmiyyah, who argued from the Quran’s coming and arriving that it is created. If the reward that comes in the form of a cloud or a young man were also uncreated, there would be no distinction between the Quran and its reward. There would have been no need for them to say, “Its reward comes,” nor would their answer to the Jahmiyyah have been valid. Rather, the Jahmiyyah would have said, “You say that it is uncreated and that its reward is uncreated, so this answer is of no benefit to you.”

It is thus clear that the imams of the Sunnah and the Jahmiyyah agreed that the reward for reciting the Quran is created. What, then, of the reward for all other deeds? This is plain: reward and punishment are what Allah has promised His servants and threatened them with. The reward is Paradise and all that it contains, and the punishment is the Fire and all that it contains. Paradise and all that it contains are created, and the Fire and all that it contains are created.

Imam Ahmad mentioned this argument in his Refutation of the Heretics and the Jahmiyyah, saying:

Chapter: The Jahmiyyah’s claim that the Quran is created, based on the hadiths that have been narrated: