Surah Al Isra ayat 7 Tafsir Quran 17:7

﴿إِنْ أَحْسَنتُمْ أَحْسَنتُمْ لِأَنفُسِكُمْ ۖ وَإِنْ أَسَأْتُمْ فَلَهَا ۚ فَإِذَا جَاءَ وَعْدُ الْآخِرَةِ لِيَسُوءُوا وُجُوهَكُمْ وَلِيَدْخُلُوا الْمَسْجِدَ كَمَا دَخَلُوهُ أَوَّلَ مَرَّةٍ وَلِيُتَبِّرُوا مَا عَلَوْا تَتْبِيرًا﴾
[ الإسراء: 7]

17:7 [And said], "If you do good, you do good for yourselves; and if you do evil, [you do it] to yourselves." Then when the final promise came, [We sent your enemies] to sadden your faces and to enter the temple in Jerusalem, as they entered it the first time, and to destroy what they had taken over with [total] destruction.

And We said ‘If you are virtuous through acts of obedience you are being virtuous to your own souls since the reward thereof is for them your souls; and if you do evil by way of working corruption it is for them’ your evildoing. So when the time the occasion for the other prophecy comes We will raise them forth that they might ravage you make you grieve through their slaying and taking captive of you a grief that will be manifest on your faces and that they might enter the Temple the Holy House of Jerusalem and destroy it just as they entered it and destroyed it the first time and that they might destroy lay waste all that they conquered all that they gained ascendancy over utterly with an utter wasting. They indeed wrought corruption a second time when they slew the prophet John. Thus Nebuchadnezzar was roused against them and so he slew thousands of them and took their children captive and destroyed the Holy House of Jerusalem.

There, you can see that if you imprint your deeds with wisdom and piety and conduct yourselves with prudence, you advantage yourselves of good behavior. But if you should bode ill, misbehave or commit yourselves to an evil line of conduct you will have harmed your own souls. Then, when in due time the second occasion* came to pass you were overpowered and vanquished that your countenances spoke a different language. Your eyes shriveled into darkness in your heads and you fell into the darkness of dismay and they -the enemies- broke into you Temple as they did once before and reduced to ruins all that they acquired

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."

(17:7) Beholdl If you did good it proved to be good for yourselves and if you committed evil it proved to be bad for your own selves. Then, when the time came for the fulfilment of the second warning, We set other enemies on you so that they might disfigure your faces and enter into the Temple just as the former enemies had entered and destroyed whatever they could lay their hands on *9 . . . . . .

[And said], "If you do good, you meaning

*9) The historical background of the second degeneration and its chastisement is as follows:
The moral and religious fervour with which the Maccabees had started their movement gradually cooled down and was replaced by love of the world and empty external form.
A split appeared among them and they themselves invited the Roman General, Pompey, to come to Palestine.
Pompey turned his attention to this land in 63 B.C.
and, taking Jerusalem, put an end to the political freedom of the Jews.
But the Roman conquerors preferred to rule their dominions through the agency of the local chiefs rather than by direct control.
Therefore, a local government was set up in Palestine which eventually passed into the hand of Herod, a clever Jew, in 40 B.C.
This ruler is well known as Herod the Great.
He ruled over the whole of Palestine and Jordan from 40 to 4 B.C.
On the one hand Herod patronised the religious leaders to please the Jews, and on the other, he propagated the Roman culture and won the goodwill of Caesar by showing his loyalty and faithfulness to the Roman Empire.
During, his reign, the Jews degenerated and fell to the lowest ebb of moral and religious life.

On the death of Herod his kingdom.
was subdivided into three parts.His son, Archelaus, became the ruler of Samaria, Judaea and northern Edom.
In A.D.
6.
however, Caesar Augustus deprived him of his authority and put the state under his Roman governor, and this arrangement continued up till A.D.
41.
This was precisely the time when Prophet Jesus ( Peace be upon him ) appeared to reform the Israelites whose religious leaders opposed him tooth and nail and even tried to get him the death sentence by the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate.

The second son of Herod, Herod Antipas, became the ruler of Galilee and Jordan in northern Palestine, and he was the person who got Prophet John ( Peace be upon him ) beheaded at the request and desire of a dancing girl.

Herod's third son, Philip, succeeded to the territories bounded on one side by river Yermuk and on the other by Mount Hermon.
Philip had been much more deeply influenced by the Roman and Greek cultures than his father and brothers.
Therefore the preaching of the truth could not have even so much effect in his land as it had in the other parts of Palestine.

In A.D.
41, the Romans appointed Herod Agrippa, the grandson of Herod the Great, ruler of the territories that had once been under Herod himself.
Coming into power this man did whatever he could to persecute the followers of Prophet Jesus ( Peace be upon him ) and used aII the forces at his disposal to crush the movement that was functioning under the guidance of the Disciples to inculcate fear of God in the people and reform their morals.

In order to have a correct estimate of the condition of the common Jews and their religious leaders, one should study the criticisms levelled by Prophet Jesus on them in his sermons contained in the four Gospels.
Even a religious man like Prophet John was beheaded before their eyes and not a voice was raised in protest against this barbarity.
Then aII the religious leaders of the community unanimously demanded death sentence for Prophet Jesus, and none but a few righteous men were there to mourn this depravity.
Above aII, when Pontius Pilate asked these depraved people, ' which condemned prisoner he should release, according to the custom, at Passover, Jesus or Barabbas the robber', they aII cried with one voice 'Barabbas'.
This was indeed the last chance Allah gave to the Jews, and then their fate was sealed.

Not long after this, a serious conflict started between the Jews and the Romans, which developed into an open revolt by the former between A.D.
64 and G6.
Both Herod Agrippa II and the Roman procurator Floris failed to put down the rebellion.
At last, the Romans crushed it by a strong military action and in A.D.
70 Titus took Jerusalem by force.
About 1,33,000 people were put to the sword, 67 thousand made slaves, and thousands sent to work in the Egyptian trines and to other cities so that they could be used in amphitheatres for being torn by wild beasts or become the " practice-target " for the sword fighters.
AlI the tall and beautiful girls were picked out for the army of conquest and the Holy City of Jerusalem and the Temple were pulled down to the ground.
After this the Jewish influence so disappeared from Palestine that the Jews could not regain power for two thousand years, and the Holy Temple could never be rebuilt..
Afterwards the Roman Emperor, Hadrian, restored Jerusalem but renamed it Aelia.
The Jews, however, were not allowed to enter it for centuries.
This was the calamity that the Jews suffered on account of their degeneration for the second time.

 

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."

( (Saying ): If ye do good) if you confess Allah’s Oneness, ( ye do good for your own souls ) the reward for that is Paradise, ( and If ye do evil ) and if you associate partners with Allah, ( it is for them (in like manner )) the punishment for that is upon them. They remained in comfort, merriness, abundance of men and numbers, and triumph over the enemy for 220 years until Allah roused against them Titus. ( So, when the time for the second (of the judgements ) came) the second of the two punishment or the second of the two corruptions ( (We roused against you others of Our slaves ) to ravage you) by killing you and taking you as captives, i.e. Titus the son of Espianos the Roman, ( and to enter the Temple ) Jerusalem ( even as they entered it the first time ) even as Nebuchadnezzar and his host entered it the first time, ( and to lay waste all that they conquered with an utter wasting ).

(And We said): "If you do good, you do good for your ownselves, and if you do evil (you do it) against yourselves." Then, when the second promise came to pass, (We permitted your enemies) to make your faces sorrowful and to enter the mosque (of Jerusalem) as they had entered it before, and to destroy with utter destruction all that fell in their hands.

Page 282 English transliteration