Exegesis of the saying of Allah the Exalted: "So when You took me unto Yourself, You were a Witness over them"
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Question:
Honorable Shaykh, I read in the books of exegesis, and I no longer find errors in the saying of Allah the Exalted regarding His prophet Isa (peace be upon him)[Al-Ma'idah 5:117] that I forget the departure of them from their purity to death.
Answer:
Because sleep is not a diversion; sleep is a death, and Allah called it a death. So if we interpret it as sleep, we have not diverted the word from its apparent meaning, because sleep is a death. The word is shared between the major death and the minor death. So if we interpret it as the minor death with evidence indicating that, this becomes an interpretation clarifying what is intended by the word, and it is not ta'wil (figurative interpretation). Ta'wil is that which has no evidence indicating it, diverting it without evidence. Now, that al-Masih (Jesus) is alive (peace be upon him) in the sky, and that he will descend in the last of time, and that he will die after that, the evidence has been mass-transmitted, and this is in the Qur'an.[An-Nisa 4:159] Is there anyone here who dies twice? This is only one death, yes.
Honorable Shaykh, I read in the books of exegesis, and I no longer find errors in the saying of Allah the Exalted regarding His prophet Isa (peace be upon him)
but when You took me up, You were
فَلَمَّا تَوَفَّيْتَنِي كُنتَAnswer:
Because sleep is not a diversion; sleep is a death, and Allah called it a death. So if we interpret it as sleep, we have not diverted the word from its apparent meaning, because sleep is a death. The word is shared between the major death and the minor death. So if we interpret it as the minor death with evidence indicating that, this becomes an interpretation clarifying what is intended by the word, and it is not ta'wil (figurative interpretation). Ta'wil is that which has no evidence indicating it, diverting it without evidence. Now, that al-Masih (Jesus) is alive (peace be upon him) in the sky, and that he will descend in the last of time, and that he will die after that, the evidence has been mass-transmitted, and this is in the Qur'an.
And there is none from the People of the Scripture but that he will surely believe in Jesus before his death
وَإِن مِّنْ أَهْلِ الْكِتَابِ إِلَّا لَيُؤْمِنَنَّ بِهِ قَبْلَ مَوْتِهِ
Source
لفظ الوفاة مشترك بين النوم والموت — alfawzan.live
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.