The Quran

وَبَشِّرِ الَّذينَ آمَنوا وَعَمِلُوا الصّالِحاتِ أَنَّ لَهُم جَنّاتٍ تَجري مِن تَحتِهَا الأَنهارُ ۖ كُلَّما رُزِقوا مِنها مِن ثَمَرَةٍ رِزقًا ۙ قالوا هٰذَا الَّذي رُزِقنا مِن قَبلُ ۖ وَأُتوا بِهِ مُتَشابِهًا ۖ وَلَهُم فيها أَزواجٌ مُطَهَّرَةٌ ۖ وَهُم فيها خالِدونَ

Muhammad Asad

But unto those who have attained to faith and do good works give the glad tiding that theirs shall be gardens through which running waters flow. Whenever they are granted fruits therefrom as their appointed sustenance, they will say, "It is this that in days of yore was granted to us as our sustenance!" - for they shall be given something that will recall that [past].¹ And there shall they have spouses pure, and there shall they abide.

Lit., "something resembling it". Various interpretations, some of them of an esoteric and highly speculative nature, have been given to this passage. For the manner in which I have translated it, I am indebted to Muhammad 'Abduh (in Manar I,232 f.), who interprets the phrase, "It is this that in days of yore was granted to us as our sustenance" as meaning: "It is this that we have been promised during our life on earth as a requital for faith and righteous deeds." In other words, man's actions and attitudes in this world will be mirrored in their "fruits", or consequences, in the life to come - as has been expressed elsewhere in the Qur'an in the verses, "And he who shall have done an atom's weight of good, shall behold it; and he who shall have done an atom's weight of evil, shall behold it" (99:7-8). As regards the reference to "spouses" in the next sentence, it is to be noted that the term zawj (of which azwaj is the plural) signifies either of the two components of a couple - that is, the male as well as the female.