The Quran

Preface

إِذ قالَ اللَّهُ يا عيسىٰ إِنّي مُتَوَفّيكَ وَرافِعُكَ إِلَيَّ وَمُطَهِّرُكَ مِنَ الَّذينَ كَفَروا وَجاعِلُ الَّذينَ اتَّبَعوكَ فَوقَ الَّذينَ كَفَروا إِلىٰ يَومِ القِيامَةِ ۖ ثُمَّ إِلَيَّ مَرجِعُكُم فَأَحكُمُ بَينَكُم فيما كُنتُم فيهِ تَختَلِفونَ

Ali Quli Qarai

When Allah said, ‘O Jesus, I shall take you[r soul],¹ and I shall raise you up toward Myself, and I shall clear you of [the calumnies of] the faithless, and I shall set those who follow you above the faithless until the Day of Resurrection. Then to Me will be your return, whereat I will judge between you concerning that about which you used to differ.

Tawaffā means ‘to exact fully’ something, ‘to receive in full,’ ‘to take one’s full share,’ and in the present Qurʾānic context it is used in the sense of taking away of the soul, either temporarily, as during sleep (as in 6:60), or permanently, as at the time of death (as in 3:193; 4:97; 6:61; 7:37, 126; 8:50; 10:46; 12:101; 13:40; 16:28; 22:5; 32:11; 40:67, 77; 47:27). In verse 39:42, it is used to refer to the taking of the soul both during sleep and death: ‘It is Allah who takes (yatawaffā) the souls at death, and those that have not died during their sleep. He retains those for whom He has decreed death, but releases the rest for a specified term.’ The passive form of the verb, tuwuffiya means ‘to die,’ ‘to expire,’ and to ‘pass away.’ It occurs in 2:234, 240. In a tradition, Imam ʿAlī ibn Mūsā al-Riḍā (ʿa) explains that Jesus Christ (ʿa) “was raised alive from the earth to the heaven. Then his soul was taken away between the earth and the heaven. After he was raised to the heaven his soul was restored to his body, and hence the words of God, the Almighty and the Glorious, ‘When Allah said: ‘O Jesus, I shall take you[r soul], and I shall raise you up to Myself…’ ” (ʿUyūn akhbār al-Riḍā, Tehran: Intishārāt-e Jahān, n.d., ed. Sayyid Mahdī al-Ḥusaynī al-Lājwardī, vol. 1, p. 215; cf. Biḥār al-anwār, vol. 14, p. 338).