The Quran

Preface

ثُمَّ أَورَثنَا الكِتابَ الَّذينَ اصطَفَينا مِن عِبادِنا ۖ فَمِنهُم ظالِمٌ لِنَفسِهِ وَمِنهُم مُقتَصِدٌ وَمِنهُم سابِقٌ بِالخَيراتِ بِإِذنِ اللَّهِ ۚ ذٰلِكَ هُوَ الفَضلُ الكَبيرُ

Yusuf Ali

Then¹ We have given the Book for inheritance to such of Our Servants as We have chosen: but there are among them² some who wrong their own souls; some who follow a middle course; and some who are, by God’s leave, foremost in good deeds; that is the highest Grace.

The force of “then” is that of finality. The Qur-ān is the last Book revealed. Or it may be here to point the contrast between “to thee” in the last verse, i.e., the Prophet, in contradistinction to the People of Islam, who inherited the Book after him.
The custodians of the Qur-ān after the Prophet were the People of Islam.
They were chosen for the Book, not in any narrow sense, but in the sense that the Book was given for their age and they were charged to obey it and preserve and propagate it, so that all mankind should receive the Message. But it does not follow that they are all true and faithful to their charge, as indeed we see too painfully around us today. Just as mankind was chosen collectively to be Vicegerents for God, and yet some among mankind fell into evil-even so, some in the house of Islam fail to follow the Light given to them, and thus “wrong their own souls”. But some follow a middle course; in their case “the spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak”: their intentions are good, but they have much to learn yet of the true Muslim life and Muslim virtues. Then there is a third class: they may not indeed be perfect, but both their intentions and their conduct are sound, and they form an example to other men: they are “foremost” in every good deed. They are so, not by their own merits, but by the Grace of God. And they have reached the highest Achievement-the salvation, which is typified by the various metaphors that follow.