The Quran

Preface

وَما جَعَلنا أَصحابَ النّارِ إِلّا مَلائِكَةً ۙ وَما جَعَلنا عِدَّتَهُم إِلّا فِتنَةً لِلَّذينَ كَفَروا لِيَستَيقِنَ الَّذينَ أوتُوا الكِتابَ وَيَزدادَ الَّذينَ آمَنوا إيمانًا ۙ وَلا يَرتابَ الَّذينَ أوتُوا الكِتابَ وَالمُؤمِنونَ ۙ وَلِيَقولَ الَّذينَ في قُلوبِهِم مَرَضٌ وَالكافِرونَ ماذا أَرادَ اللَّهُ بِهٰذا مَثَلًا ۚ كَذٰلِكَ يُضِلُّ اللَّهُ مَن يَشاءُ وَيَهدي مَن يَشاءُ ۚ وَما يَعلَمُ جُنودَ رَبِّكَ إِلّا هُوَ ۚ وَما هِيَ إِلّا ذِكرىٰ لِلبَشَرِ

Yusuf Ali

And We have set none¹ but angels as Guardians of the Fire; and We have fixed their number² only as a trial for Unbelievers,- in order that the People of the Book may arrive at certainty, and the Believers may increase in Faith,- and that no doubts may be left for the People of the Book and the Believers, and that those in whose hearts is a disease and the Unbelievers may say, “What symbol doth God intend by this?”³ Thus doth God leave to stray whom He pleaseth, and guide whom He pleaseth: and none can know the forces of thy Lord, except He.⁴ And this is no other than a warning to mankind.

Cf. 66:6, and n. 5540. There was a great volume of angelology in the religious literature of the People of the Book (i.e., the Jews and Christians) to whom (among others) an appeal is made in this verse. The Essenes, a Jewish brotherhood with highly spiritual ideas, to which perhaps the Prophet Jesus himself belonged, had an extensive literature of angelology. In the Midrash also, which was a Jewish school of exegesis and mystical interpretation, there was much said about angels. The Eastern Christian sects contemporary with the birth of Islam had borrowed and developed many of these ideas, and their mystics owed much to the Gnostics and the Persian apocalyptic systems. In the New Testament the relation of the angels with Fire is referred to more than once. In Rev. 9:11 we have “the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon”. In Rev. 14:18 there is an “angel which had power over fire”, and in Rev. 16:8 an angel has “power . . . given unto him to scorch men with fire”. In the Old Testament (Daniel 7:9-10) me essence of all angels is fire: thousands of them issued as a fiery stream from before the Ancient of Days, whose “throne was like the fiery flame, and His wheels as burning fire”.
The mystic significance of numbers is a favourite theme with some writers, but I lay no stress on it. In Christian theology the number of the Beast, 666, in Rev. 13:18 has given rise to much controversy, and may refer only to the numerical value of the letters in the name of the Roman Emperor Nero. In our own literature I think that we ought to avoid too much insistence on speculative conjectures. (R).
There are four classes of people mentioned here: (1) the Muslims will have their faith increased, because they believe that all revelation is from God Most Merciful, and all His forces will work in their favour; (2) the People of the Book, those who had received previous revelations of an analogous character, the Jews and Christians, had numerous sects disputing with each other on minute points of doctrine; but they will now, if they believe, find rest from controversies in a broad understanding of scripture; (3) those in whose hearts is a disease (see 2:8-10, notes 33-34), the insincere ones, the hypocrites, will only be mystified, because they believe nothing and have rejected the grace and mercy of God; (4) the Unbelievers have frankly done the same and must suffer similar consequences. (R).
It is a necessary consequence of moral responsibility and freedom of choice in man, that he should be left free to stray if he chooses to do so, in spite of all the warning and the instruction he receives. God’s channels of warning and instruction?His spiritual forces-are infinite, as are His powers. No man can know them. But this warning or reminder is addressed to all mankind.
All things are referred to God. But we must not attribute evil to Him. In 4:79 we are expressly told that the good comes from God, and the evil from ourselves.