Surah Al Isra ayat 6 Tafsir Quran 17:6

﴿ثُمَّ رَدَدْنَا لَكُمُ الْكَرَّةَ عَلَيْهِمْ وَأَمْدَدْنَاكُم بِأَمْوَالٍ وَبَنِينَ وَجَعَلْنَاكُمْ أَكْثَرَ نَفِيرًا﴾
[ الإسراء: 6]

17:6 Then We gave back to you a return victory over them. And We reinforced you with wealth and sons and made you more numerous in manpower

Then We gave you back the turn the rule of the state and victory to prevail over them one hundred years later by having Goliath slain and We aided you with children and wealth and made you greater in number in clan.

When the conquerors abounded in self - conceit and you humbled yourselves to Allah We gave you mastery over them and We made you abound more in numerosity

It was mentioned in the Tawrah that the Jews would spread Mischief twice Allah tells us that He made a declaration to the Children of Israel in the Scripture, meaning that He had already told them in the Book which He revealed to them, that they would cause mischief on the earth twice, and would become tyrants and extremely arrogant, meaning they would become shameless oppressors of people, Allah says: وَقَضَيْنَآ إِلَيْهِ ذَلِكَ الاٌّمْرَ أَنَّ دَابِرَ هَـؤُلآْءِ مَقْطُوعٌ مُّصْبِحِينَ ( And We made known this decree to him, that the root of those (sinners ) was to be cut off in the early morning.)( 15:66 ), meaning, We already told him about that and informed him of it. The First Episode of Mischief caused by the Jews, and their Punishment for it فَإِذَا جَآءَ وَعْدُ أُولَـهُمَا ( So, when the promise came for the first of the two ) meaning the first of the two episodes of mischief. بَعَثْنَا عَلَيْكُمْ عِبَادًا لَّنَآ أُوْلِى بَأْسٍ شَدِيدٍ ( We sent against you servants of Ours given to terrible warfare. ) means, `We unleashed soldiers against you from among Our creatures who were given to terrible warfare,' i.e., they had great strength and weapons and power.
They entered the very innermost parts of your homes, meaning they took possession of your land and invaded the very innermost parts of your homes, going between and through your houses, coming and going freely with no fear of anyone.
This was the promise ( completely ) fulfilled.
The earlier and later commentators differed over the identity of these invaders.
Many Isra'iliyyat ( reports from Jewish sources ) were narrated about this, but I did not want to make this book too long by mentioning them, because some of them are fabricated, concocted by their heretics, and others may be true, but we have no need of them, praise be to Allah.
What Allah has told us in His Book ( the Qur'an ) is sufficient and we have no need of what is in the other books that came before.
Neither Allah nor His Messenger required us to refer to them.
Allah told His Messenger that when ( the Jews ) committed transgression and aggression, Allah gave their enemies power over them to destroy their country and enter the innermost parts of their homes.
Their humiliation and subjugation was a befitting punishment, and your Lord is never unfair or unjust to His servants.
They had rebelled and killed many of the Prophets and scholars.
Ibn Jarir recorded that Yahya bin Sa`id said: "I heard Sa`id bin Al-Musayyib saying: `Nebuchadnezzar conquered Ash-Sham ( Greater Syria, including Palestine ), destroying Jerusalem and killing them, then he came to Damascus and found blood boiling in a censer.
He asked them: What is this blood They said: We found our forefathers doing this.
Because of that blood, he killed seventy thousand of the believers and others, then the blood stopped boiling.
This report is Sahih from Sa`id bin Al-Musayyib, and this event is well-known, as he ( Nebuchadnezzar ) killed their nobles and scholars, and did not leave alive anyone who knew the Tawrah by heart.
He took many prisoners from the sons of the Prophets and others, and did many other things that would take too long to mention here.
If we had found anything that was correct or close enough, we could have written it and reported it here.
And Allah knows best.
Then Allah says: إِنْ أَحْسَنتُمْ أَحْسَنتُمْ لاًّنفُسِكُمْ وَإِنْ أَسَأْتُمْ فَلَهَا ( (And We said ): "If you do good, you do good for your own selves, and if you do evil ( you do it ) against yourselves.") As Allah says elsewhere: مَّنْ عَمِلَ صَـلِحاً فَلِنَفْسِهِ وَمَنْ أَسَآءَ فَعَلَيْهَا ( Whosoever does a righteous good deed, it is for (the benefit of ) himself; and whosoever does evil, it is against himself.) 45:15 The Second Episode of Mischief Then Allah says: فَإِذَا جَآءَ وَعْدُ الاٌّخِرَةِ ( Then, when the second promise came to pass, ) meaning, the second episode of mischief, when your enemies came again, لِيَسُوءُواْ وُجُوهَكُمْ ( (We permitted your enemies ) to disgrace your faces) meaning, to humiliate you and subdue you, وَلِيَدْخُلُواْ الْمَسْجِدَ ( and to enter the Masjid ) meaning, Bayt Al-Maqdis ( Jerusalem ). كَمَا دَخَلُوهُ أَوَّلَ مَرَّةٍ ( as they had entered it before, ) when they entered the very innermost parts of your homes. وَلِيُتَبِّرُواْ ( and to destroy ) wrecking and inflicting ruin upon it. مَا عَلَوْاْ ( all that fell in their hands. ) everything they could get their hands on. تَتْبِيرًاعَسَى رَبُّكُمْ أَن يَرْحَمَكُمْ ( with utter destruction.
It may be that your Lord may show mercy unto you ) meaning that He may rid you of them. وَإِنْ عُدتُّمْ عُدْنَا ( but if you return (to sins ), We shall return ( to Our punishment ).) meaning, if you return to causing mischief, عُدْنَا ( We shall return ) means, We `will once again punish you in this world, along with the punishment and torment We save for you in the Hereafter.' وَجَعَلْنَا جَهَنَّمَ لِلْكَـفِرِينَ حَصِيرًا ( And We have made Hell a prison Hasir for the disbelievers. ) meaning, a place of permanent detention, a prison which cannot be avoided or escaped.
Ibn `Abbas said, "Hasir here means a jail." Mujahid said, "They will be detained in it." Others said like- wise.
Al-Hasan said, "Hasir means a bed of Fire." Qatadah said: "The Children of Israel returned to aggres- sion, so Allah sent this group against them, Muhammad ﷺ and his companions, who made them pay the Jizyah, with willing submission, and feeling themselves subdued."

(17:6) Then after this We afforded you an opportunity to over-power them and helped you with abundance of riches and children and increased you far more in numbers than before. *8

Then We gave back to you a meaning

*8) This refers to the lease of time that the Israelites ( That is the people of Judah ) got after their release from the captivity of Babylon.
As for the people of Israel and Samaria, they did not rise again after their moral and spiritual degeneration.
But among the people of Judah there still were some people who practised the truth and invited others also to follow it.
They carried on their work of invitation to the truth among the remaining Israelites in Judah and exhorted those also to repent and follow the truth who had been driven out into Babylon and other lands.
At last the mercy of AIIah came to their help.
The downfall of Babylon started.
The Persian king, Cyrus, took Babylon in 539 B.C.and in the following year issued a decree allowing the Israelites to return to and re-settle in their homeland.
The Israelites began to return home in caravan after caravan, and ties continued for along time.
Cyrus also allowed the Israelites to rebuild the Temple of Solomon but the neighbouring communities who had settled in this land resisted it.
At last Darfius I appointed Zerubbabel, a grandson of the last king of Judah, governor of Judah in 522 B.C.who got the Temple rebuilt under the care of Prophet Haggai, Prophet Zechariah and Joshua.
In 458 B.C.
Ezra arrived in Judah along with an exiled group and the persian king Artaxerxes made the following decree.

" And thou, Ezra, after the wisdom of thy God that is in thine hand, set magistrates and judges, which may judge aII the people that are beyond the river, aII such as know the laws of thy God; and teach ye them that know them not.

And whosoever will not do the law of thy God and the law of the king let judgment be executed speedily upon him whether it be unto death, or to banishment, or to confiscation of goods, or to imprisonment.
"( Ezra, 7:25-26 ).

Taking advantage of this decree, Ezra carried out the revival of the religion of Prophet Moses.
He gathered together all the righteous and good people from the Israelites and set up a strong organisation.
He compiled and spread the Pentateuch which contained the Torah, made arrangements for the religious education of the Israelites, enforced the law and started purging the people of moral and ideological weaknesses which the had adopted by intermixing with the other communities.
He compelled they Jews to divorce the idolatrous wives they had married, and took a covenant from them that they would worship God alone and follow His Law only.

In 455 B.C.an exiled group came back to Judah under Nehemiah whom the Persian king appointed as the ruler of Jerusalem and ordered him to build the wall round the city.
Thus, after 150 years the Holy city was fully restored and became the centre of Jewish religion and culture, But the Israelites of northern Palestine, and Samaria did not benefit by the work of revival done by Ezra.They built a rival sanctuary on Mount Gerizim, and tried to make it the religious centre for the people of the Book.
This caused a further, and perhaps the final, split Between the Jews and the Samaritans.

The Jews suffered a set-back for a while with the fall of the Persian Empire and the conquests of Alexander the Great and the rise of the Greeks.
After the death of Alexander, his kingdom was subdivided into three empires.
Syria tell to the lot of the Seleucide empire, with Antioch as its capital, whose ruler Antiochus III incorporated Palestine into his dominions in 198 B.C.
These Greek conquerors who were idolatrous by precept and freelance morally felt greatly ill at ease with the Jewish religion and culture.
So, they began to propagate the rival Greek way of life and culture by political and economic pressure, and were able to win over a strong section of the Israelites who became their helpers.
This external interference caused a split in the Jewish nation.
One group among them readily adopted the Greek dress, the Greek language, the Greek way of life and the Greek sports, while the other persistently stuck to their own culture and way of life.

In 175 B.C.
when Antiochus IV ( who was called Epiphanes, that is, the manifestation of God ) came to the throne, he used all his power and authority to stamp out the Jewish religion and culture.
He got idols installed in the Holy Temple at Jerusalem and forced the Jews to prostrate themselves before them.
He strictly forbade the rite of offering the sacrifices at the altar, and commanded the Jews to offer sacrifices to idolatrous deities instead.
He proposed death penalty for those who would keep the Torah in their houses, or observe the Sabbath or perform circumcision of their children.
But the Jews did not yield to this coercion, and started a powerful resistance movement, known in history as the revolt of the Maccabees.
Though in this struggle the sympathies of the Greece-oriented Jews were with the Greeks, and they fully cooperated with the despots of Antioch to crush the Maccabean revolt, the common Jews who still retained the religious fervour of the days of Ezra sided with the Maccabees, who were ultimately able to drive out the Greeks and establish a free religious state which remained in power till 67 B.C This state prospered and in time extended to alI those territories which had once been under the control the kingdoms of Judah and Israel.
It was able to annex a part of the land of the Philistines which had remained unconquered even in the days of Prophets David and Solomon ( Peace be upon them ).

This is the historical background of the verse of the Qur'an under commentary.

 

It was mentioned in the Tawrah that the Jews would spread Mischief twice Allah tells us that He made a declaration to the Children of Israel in the Scripture, meaning that He had already told them in the Book which He revealed to them, that they would cause mischief on the earth twice, and would become tyrants and extremely arrogant, meaning they would become shameless oppressors of people, Allah says: وَقَضَيْنَآ إِلَيْهِ ذَلِكَ الاٌّمْرَ أَنَّ دَابِرَ هَـؤُلآْءِ مَقْطُوعٌ مُّصْبِحِينَ ( And We made known this decree to him, that the root of those (sinners ) was to be cut off in the early morning.)( 15:66 ), meaning, We already told him about that and informed him of it. The First Episode of Mischief caused by the Jews, and their Punishment for it فَإِذَا جَآءَ وَعْدُ أُولَـهُمَا ( So, when the promise came for the first of the two ) meaning the first of the two episodes of mischief. بَعَثْنَا عَلَيْكُمْ عِبَادًا لَّنَآ أُوْلِى بَأْسٍ شَدِيدٍ ( We sent against you servants of Ours given to terrible warfare. ) means, `We unleashed soldiers against you from among Our creatures who were given to terrible warfare,' i.e., they had great strength and weapons and power.
They entered the very innermost parts of your homes, meaning they took possession of your land and invaded the very innermost parts of your homes, going between and through your houses, coming and going freely with no fear of anyone.
This was the promise ( completely ) fulfilled.
The earlier and later commentators differed over the identity of these invaders.
Many Isra'iliyyat ( reports from Jewish sources ) were narrated about this, but I did not want to make this book too long by mentioning them, because some of them are fabricated, concocted by their heretics, and others may be true, but we have no need of them, praise be to Allah.
What Allah has told us in His Book ( the Qur'an ) is sufficient and we have no need of what is in the other books that came before.
Neither Allah nor His Messenger required us to refer to them.
Allah told His Messenger that when ( the Jews ) committed transgression and aggression, Allah gave their enemies power over them to destroy their country and enter the innermost parts of their homes.
Their humiliation and subjugation was a befitting punishment, and your Lord is never unfair or unjust to His servants.
They had rebelled and killed many of the Prophets and scholars.
Ibn Jarir recorded that Yahya bin Sa`id said: "I heard Sa`id bin Al-Musayyib saying: `Nebuchadnezzar conquered Ash-Sham ( Greater Syria, including Palestine ), destroying Jerusalem and killing them, then he came to Damascus and found blood boiling in a censer.
He asked them: What is this blood They said: We found our forefathers doing this.
Because of that blood, he killed seventy thousand of the believers and others, then the blood stopped boiling.
This report is Sahih from Sa`id bin Al-Musayyib, and this event is well-known, as he ( Nebuchadnezzar ) killed their nobles and scholars, and did not leave alive anyone who knew the Tawrah by heart.
He took many prisoners from the sons of the Prophets and others, and did many other things that would take too long to mention here.
If we had found anything that was correct or close enough, we could have written it and reported it here.
And Allah knows best.
Then Allah says: إِنْ أَحْسَنتُمْ أَحْسَنتُمْ لاًّنفُسِكُمْ وَإِنْ أَسَأْتُمْ فَلَهَا ( (And We said ): "If you do good, you do good for your own selves, and if you do evil ( you do it ) against yourselves.") As Allah says elsewhere: مَّنْ عَمِلَ صَـلِحاً فَلِنَفْسِهِ وَمَنْ أَسَآءَ فَعَلَيْهَا ( Whosoever does a righteous good deed, it is for (the benefit of ) himself; and whosoever does evil, it is against himself.) 45:15 The Second Episode of Mischief Then Allah says: فَإِذَا جَآءَ وَعْدُ الاٌّخِرَةِ ( Then, when the second promise came to pass, ) meaning, the second episode of mischief, when your enemies came again, لِيَسُوءُواْ وُجُوهَكُمْ ( (We permitted your enemies ) to disgrace your faces) meaning, to humiliate you and subdue you, وَلِيَدْخُلُواْ الْمَسْجِدَ ( and to enter the Masjid ) meaning, Bayt Al-Maqdis ( Jerusalem ). كَمَا دَخَلُوهُ أَوَّلَ مَرَّةٍ ( as they had entered it before, ) when they entered the very innermost parts of your homes. وَلِيُتَبِّرُواْ ( and to destroy ) wrecking and inflicting ruin upon it. مَا عَلَوْاْ ( all that fell in their hands. ) everything they could get their hands on. تَتْبِيرًاعَسَى رَبُّكُمْ أَن يَرْحَمَكُمْ ( with utter destruction.
It may be that your Lord may show mercy unto you ) meaning that He may rid you of them. وَإِنْ عُدتُّمْ عُدْنَا ( but if you return (to sins ), We shall return ( to Our punishment ).) meaning, if you return to causing mischief, عُدْنَا ( We shall return ) means, We `will once again punish you in this world, along with the punishment and torment We save for you in the Hereafter.' وَجَعَلْنَا جَهَنَّمَ لِلْكَـفِرِينَ حَصِيرًا ( And We have made Hell a prison Hasir for the disbelievers. ) meaning, a place of permanent detention, a prison which cannot be avoided or escaped.
Ibn `Abbas said, "Hasir here means a jail." Mujahid said, "They will be detained in it." Others said like- wise.
Al-Hasan said, "Hasir means a bed of Fire." Qatadah said: "The Children of Israel returned to aggres- sion, so Allah sent this group against them, Muhammad ﷺ and his companions, who made them pay the Jizyah, with willing submission, and feeling themselves subdued."

( Then we gave you once again your turn against them ) through Koresh’s defeat of Nebuchadnezzar; it is also said that this means: and We had pity on you and thus gave you once again your turn against them, ( and We aided you with wealth and children and made you more in soldiery ) We made you more in men and numbers,

Then We gave you once again, a return of victory over them. And We helped you with wealth and children and made you more numerous in man power.

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