The Quran

103

ثُمَّ نُنَجّي رُسُلَنا وَالَّذينَ آمَنوا ۚ كَذٰلِكَ حَقًّا عَلَينا نُنجِ المُؤمِنينَ

Muhammad Asad

[For thus it always happens: We seal the doom of all who deny the truth and give the lie to Our messages;] and thereupon We save Our apostles and those who have attained to faith.¹ Thus have We willed it upon Ourselves: We save all who believe [in Us].²

My long interpolation at the beginning of this verse is based, in the main, on Zamakhshari's interpretation of it. It is necessitated by the fact that the adverbial conjunction thumma ("thereupon" or "thereafter") does not relate here to the immediately preceding passage but to a theme repeatedly occurring in the Qur'an and only indirectly alluded to in verse 102 above: namely, the experiences of the earlier prophets with their recalcitrant communities, the doom of those who gave the lie to their messages and, in every case, a divine deliverance of the prophet concerned and of those who followed him. Rashid Rida' describes this passage, rightly, as "one of the most outstanding examples of the elliptic mode of expression (ijaz) to be found in the Qur'an" (Manor XI, 487).
Razi explains the phrase haqqan 'alayna (lit., "as is incumbent upon Us") as denoting no more than a logical necessity, i.e., the unavoidable fulfilment of God's "willing it upon Himself", and not a "duty" on His part: for, neither is anything "incumbent" upon Him who has the power to will anything, nor - as Razi points out-has man any "right" with regard to his Creator.