After the account of the descent of the heavenly table, this verse addresses God’s conversation with Jesus about the polytheistic claims of the Christians. God will say to Jesus son of Mary on the Day of Resurrection:(281) Did you tell people to take you and your mother as their gods, or did they commit such polytheism (shirk) on their own? This reproachful question is a rhetorical interrogative and is in reality a rebuke of the community (umma) of Christ.
Jesus (a.s.) first glorifies God: “He will say, ‘Immaculate are You”; meaning it is impossible for me to utter such inappropriate and unreasonable words, because it is incompatible with my station of infallibility (ʿiṣma) and prophethood (risāla); then regarding the occurrence itself, he states that he never spoke such polytheistic (shirk) words, otherwise God, who is aware of all things (hidden and manifest), would have known; since God does not know it, it becomes clear that I (Jesus) never said such a thing.
According to the principle that “conditioning a ruling on a quality indicates causality” (mushʿir bi-ʿilliyyat taʿlīq al-ḥukm ʿalā l-waṣf), the words “son” (ibn) and “mother” (umm) in this verse allude to the negation of the divinity of Jesus and his mother.
“Taking as god” (ittikhādh ilāh) is the same as divine submission (khuḍūʿ ilāhī) before something or someone whom one has made a god, in such a way that one considers him to have independent influence and obeys him unconditionally.
God is the imperishable reality whose essence is necessary (wājib) and undeniable, and if there is any disagreement, it concerns His attributes. For this reason, the Qur’an in most cases has taken the existence of God as accepted, as the qualification “besides Allah” (min dūn Allāh) also indicates.
Jesus (a.s.) at the end of the conversation states: [O God!] You know what is in my self (nafs), but I do not know what is in Your Self; then he bases his words on this universal principle that only God has knowledge of all the unseen (ghayb), and since he does not have knowledge of the absolute unseen (ghayb muṭlaq), he is also not aware of God’s essence (dhāt). Therefore, the word “self” (nafs) in this content means essence (dhāt), not soul, spirit, or the like, so that it might be said that its application to God is metaphorical (majāz) and by way of correspondence.
Selected Commentary
After the account of the descent of the heavenly table, this verse addresses God’s conversation with Jesus about the polytheistic claims of the Christians. God will say to Jesus son of Mary on the Day of Resurrection:(281) Did you tell people to take you and your mother as their gods, or did they commit such polytheism (shirk) on their own? This reproachful question is a rhetorical interrogative and is in reality a rebuke of the community (umma) of Christ.
Jesus (a.s.) first glorifies God: “He will say, ‘Immaculate are You”; meaning it is impossible for me to utter such inappropriate and unreasonable words, because it is incompatible with my station of infallibility (ʿiṣma) and prophethood (risāla); then regarding the occurrence itself, he states that he never spoke such polytheistic (shirk) words, otherwise God, who is aware of all things (hidden and manifest), would have known; since God does not know it, it becomes clear that I (Jesus) never said such a thing.
According to the principle that “conditioning a ruling on a quality indicates causality” (mushʿir bi-ʿilliyyat taʿlīq al-ḥukm ʿalā l-waṣf), the words “son” (ibn) and “mother” (umm) in this verse allude to the negation of the divinity of Jesus and his mother.
“Taking as god” (ittikhādh ilāh) is the same as divine submission (khuḍūʿ ilāhī) before something or someone whom one has made a god, in such a way that one considers him to have independent influence and obeys him unconditionally.
God is the imperishable reality whose essence is necessary (wājib) and undeniable, and if there is any disagreement, it concerns His attributes. For this reason, the Qur’an in most cases has taken the existence of God as accepted, as the qualification “besides Allah” (min dūn Allāh) also indicates.
Jesus (a.s.) at the end of the conversation states: [O God!] You know what is in my self (nafs), but I do not know what is in Your Self; then he bases his words on this universal principle that only God has knowledge of all the unseen (ghayb), and since he does not have knowledge of the absolute unseen (ghayb muṭlaq), he is also not aware of God’s essence (dhāt). Therefore, the word “self” (nafs) in this content means essence (dhāt), not soul, spirit, or the like, so that it might be said that its application to God is metaphorical (majāz) and by way of correspondence.