O humanity! Be mindful of your Lord Who created you from a single soul, and from it He created its mate,1 and through both He spread countless men and women. And be mindful of Allah—in Whose Name you appeal to one another—and ˹honour˺ family ties. Surely Allah is ever Watchful over you.
O mankind! reverence your Guardian-Lord, who created you from a single person, 504 created, of like nature, His mate, and from them twain scattered (like seeds) countless men and women;- reverence Allah, through whom 505 you demand your mutual (rights), and (reverence) the wombs 506 (That bore you): for Allah ever watches over you.
504 Nafs may mean: (1) soul; (2) self; (3) person, living person; (4) will, good pleasure, as in 4:4 below. Minha; I follow the construction suggested by Imam RazT. The particle min would then suggest here not a portion or a source of something else, but a species, a nature, a similarity. The pronoun Ha refers of course to Nafs (Cf. 7:189). (R).
505 All our mutual rights and duties are referred to Allah. We are His creatures: His Will is the standard and measure of Good; and our duties are measured by our conformity with His Will. "Our wills are ours, to make them Thine," says Tennyson (In Memoriam). Among ourselves (human beings) our mutual rights and dudes arise out of Allah's Law, the sense of Right that is implanted in us by Him.
506 Among the most wonderful mysteries of our nature is that of sex. The unregenerate male is apt, in the pride of his physical strength, to forget the allimportant part which the female plays in his very existence, and in all the social relationships that arise in our collective human lives. The mother that bore us must ever have our reverence. The wife, through whom we enter parentage, must have our reverence. Sex, which governs so much our physical life, and has so much influence on our emotional and higher nature, deserves-not our fear, or our contempt, or our amused indulgence, but-our reverence in the highest sense of the term (Cf. 30:21). With this fitting introduction we enter on a discussion of women, orphans, and family relationships.
O MANKIND! Be conscious of your Sustainer, who has created you out of one living entity, and out of it created its mate, and out of the two spread abroad a multitude of men and women. 1 And remain conscious of God, in whose name you demand [your rights] from one another, and of these ties of kinship. Verily, God is ever watchful over you!
1 Out of the many meanings attributable to the term nafs - soul, spirit, mind, animate being, living entity, human being, person, self (in the sense of a personal identity), humankind, life-essence, vital principle, and so forth - most of the classical commentators choose "human being", and assume that it refers here to Adam. Muhammad ‘Abduh, however, rejects this interpretation (Manar IV, 323 ff.) and gives, instead, his preference to "humankind" inasmuch as this term stresses the common origin and brotherhood of the human race (which, undoubtedly, is the purport of the above verse), without, at the same time, unwarrantably tying it to the Biblical account of the creation of Adam and Eve. My rendering of nafs, in this context, as "living entity" follows the same reasoning - As regards the expression zawjaha ("its mate"), it is to be noted that, with reference to animate beings, the term zawj ("a pair", "one of a pair" or "a mate") applies to the male as well as to the female component of a pair or couple; hence, with reference to human beings, it signifies a woman's mate (husband) as well as a man's mate (wife). Abu Muslim - as quoted by Razi - interprets the phrase "He created out of it (minha) its mate" as meaning "He created its mate [i.e., its sexual counterpart] out of its own kind (min jinsiha)", thus supporting the view of Muhammad ‘Abduh referred to above. The literal translation of minha as "out of it" clearly alludes, in conformity with the text, to the biological fact that both sexes have originated from "one living entity".
1 i.e., Adam and Eve.