In these excerpts, the exegete Ṭabarī provides interpretations of several Qurʾānic verses related to the heavenly court on the Day of Resurrection. Commenting on Q. 2:210 (“God will come to them in canopies of clouds”), Ṭabarī cites an opinion from Ibn ʿAbbās comparing clouds to arches (ṭāqāt) and noting that God is in them while being surrounded by angels. He also adduces a report from al-Ḍaḥḥāk, who comments on Q. 69:19 (“The angels will be on its borders and above them eight will carry the throne of your lord”) by detailing how God, the angels, and the hell-monster Jahannam will descend to earth on the Day of Judgment. Further elaborating on what exactly is meant by the expression “God comes to them” in Q. 2:210, Ṭabarī provides four interpretations. The first states that this expression should be understood exactly as God uttered it. The second holds that the expression should not be understood as God moving from one place to another. The third indicates that the expression should be taken to mean that God’s command (amr) comes to the resurrected, just as, when people say, “We are afraid that the Umayyads will come to us,” they actually mean that the Umayyads’ command or judgment (ḥukm) will apply to them. The fourth interpretation explains that it is in fact God’s reward (thawāb), reckoning (ḥisāb), and punishment (ʿadhāb)that will come to the resurrected. In his chapter comparing earthly justice with heavenly justice in the early Islamic imagination in Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts, Christian Lange uses Ṭabarī’s statements to highlight the fact that most commentators avoid interpreting verses such as Q. 2:210 in an anthropomorphic manner.
This source is part of the Online Companion to the book Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts, ed. Intisar A. Rabb and Abigail Krasner Balbale(ILSP/HUP 2017)—a collection of primary sources and other material used in and related to the book.