In these excerpts, the exegete Thaʿlabī provides interpretations of several Quranic verses pertaining to the heavenly court on the Day of Resurrection. In his commentary on Q. 39:69 (“The earth will shine with the light of its Lord. . . .”), Thaʿlabī presents reports explaining that God will manifest Himself (yatajallā) and illuminate the “open grounds of resurrection” (ʿaraṣāt al-qiyāma) with His light. In explaining Q. 2:210 (“God will come to them in canopies of clouds [fī ẓulalin min al-ghamām]”), Thaʿlabī cites al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s view that God is “inside a cover (fī sutra) of clouds, so that the people of the earth do not look at Him.” As for the expression “God will come to them,” Thaʿlabī notes that God’s “coming” (ityān)refers to “recompense” (al-jazāʾ). Recompense is referred to as “coming” just as how “frightening” (takhwīf) and “punishment” (taʿdhīb) are also referred to as “coming” in the story of Nimrod in Q. 16:26 (“Then God came upon their building from the foundations, and the roof fell down upon them from above, and the punishment came upon them when they were not aware”). 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 these reports to illustrate Muslim exegetes’ conceptions of the heavenly court and the ways in which they sought to explain away potentially anthropomorphic imagery in the Quran.
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.