9. Sura al-Nisa
The Quranic Text & Ali’s Version:
مَّايَفْعَلُاللّهُبِعَذَابِكُمْإِنشَكَرْتُمْوَآمَنتُمْ
...
4:147. What can Allah gain by your punishment, if ye are grateful and ye believe?
... وَكَانَاللّهُشَاكِرًاعَلِيمًا﴿١٤٧﴾
Nay, it is Allah that recogniseth(all good), and knoweth all things.
Other versions:
Asad
4:147
Why would
God cause you to suffer [for your past sins] if you are grateful and
attain to belief -
seeing
that God is always responsive to gratitude, all-knowing?160
Yuksel’s version
4:147 What would God want with your punishment if you only appreciate and acknowledge? God is Appreciative, Knowledgeable.
[[ Asad’s note - 160
The gratitude spoken of here is of a general nature - a feeling of
thankfulness for being
alive and endowed with what is described
as a "soul": a feeling which often leads man to
the
realization that this boon of life and consciousness is not
accidental, and thus, in
a logical process of thought, to belief in God. According to Zamakhshari, this is the
reason why "gratitude" is placed before "belief" in the structure of the above sentence.