Al Furqān

وَلَقَدْ صَرَّفْنَاهُ بَيْنَهُمْ لِيَذَّكَّرُوا فَأَبَى أَكْثَرُ النَّاسِ إِلاَ كُفُورًا

50. “And indeed We have distributed it amongst them so that they may remember (Allah), but most of mankind are averse (to aught) save ingratitude.”

Remembrance of Divine blessings is to express gratitude for them and negligence of them is to express ingratitude and rejection for them. In this noble verse, Allah refers to the holy Qur’an and says:

Although many of commentators such as the deceased Tabarsi and Shiykh Tūsi in Tibyan, and ’Allamah Tabataba’i in Al-Mizan have said that the pronoun of the word ‘Sarrafnah’ refers to rain, that in this case its concept is that Allah sends drops of rain in various directions and places and divides them among people for the sake of remembrance of this great blessing of Allah, but it is right to say that this pronoun refers to the Qur’an and its verses, for this kind of structure (past tense and present continuous tense) is used 10 times in the holy Qur’an and 9 of them explicitly refer to the verses of the Qur’an.

And in many cases the Qur’anic phrase /liyazzakkarū/ (that they may remember) is placed before them and so it seems impossible that only in this holy verse this phrase has got a different meaning. Basically the Arabic word /tasrif/, which means to change and transform, is not very consistent with sending down rainwater, while it is more consistent with the verses of the Qur’an which are presented in various forms, sometimes in the form of promise, sometimes in the form of threat of punishment, sometimes in the form of prohibition, sometimes in the form of enjoinment order, and sometimes in the form of the life story of ancient people.