A Discussion of the Narrations

1) Exegesis of the Killing of the Boy

From Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad (a.s.) who said: … Then he said: “As for the boy, his parents were believers,” but he emerged as a disbeliever, and God—exalted be His mention—knew that if he remained, he would cause his parents to disbelieve and they would be tempted by him and led astray through his misguidance. So God—exalted be His mention—commanded me to kill him, intending thereby to transfer them to a place of honor in the end. He shared in the ego (anāniyya) by saying: “We feared that he would overwhelm them with transgression and disbelief. So we desired that their Lord would give them in exchange one better than him in purity and closer in affection.”

He only shared in the ego because he feared, while God does not fear, as nothing escapes Him and no one He desires can resist Him. Khiḍr only feared being prevented from what he was commanded to do and thus not attaining the reward for carrying it out. It occurred to him that God—exalted be His mention—had made him a means for showing mercy to the boy’s parents, so he acted in this matter from a middle position of human nature, just as he had done with Moses, for at that time he became the informer and Moses, the one spoken to by God (kalīm Allāh), became the informed. This was not because Khiḍr deserved a rank above Moses, as Moses was superior to Khiḍr, but rather because Moses deserved clarification.(415)

Note:

According to some accounts, it was written on the boy’s shoulder: “natural disbeliever” (kāfir maṭbūʿ).(416)

Any will related to God, if attributed to Khiḍr, and any divine word or action attributed to him, firstly refers to God’s station of action, not His eternal essence, and secondly will be through the manifestation of the perfect infallible human being. Therefore, Khiḍr is nothing but a manifestation of one of God’s beautiful names.

2) Replacing the Corrupt Son with a Righteous Child

From Abū ʿAbdallāh regarding God’s words: “So we desired that their Lord would give them in exchange one better…” He said: A girl was born to them who then gave birth to a boy who became a prophet.(417)

From al-Ḥasan ibn Saʿīd al-Laḥmī who said: One of our companions had a daughter born to him. He went to see Abū ʿAbdallāh (a.s.) who saw him displeased about it. So Abū ʿAbdallāh said to him: “What if God revealed to you ‘I will choose for you or you choose for yourself’—what would you say?” He replied: “I would say ‘O Lord, You choose for me.’” He said: “Indeed God has chosen for you.” Then he said: “The boy whom the knowledgeable one killed, as mentioned in God’s words: ‘So we desired that their Lord would give them in exchange one better than him in purity and closer in mercy’—God gave them a girl in exchange who gave birth to seventy prophets.”(418)

Note: It is not easy to confirm the characteristics of the future child without verifying the chain of narration of the hadith describing it. What appears in some exegetical works that “several prophets were born from the daughter that God later gave to those parents” does not align with what has been narrated from Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad (a.s.) from his noble father, who said “this matter is unlikely as there were many prophets among the Children of Israel and this woman was not from that tribe.”(419)