The Holy Quran with Five Volume Commentary (Vol 4) — Page 194
CH. 21 AL-ANBIYA' PT. 17 وَمِنَ الشَّيْطِينِ مَنْ يَغُوصُونَ لَهُ And We subjected to him. 83 وَيَعْمَلُونَ عَمَلًا دُونَ ذَلِكَ وَكُنَّا لَهُمْ ;and did other work beside that حفِظِينَ "deep divers who dived for him, and it was We Who guarded them. 2413 وَأَيُّوبَ إِذْ نَادَى رَبَّةَ أَنِّي مَسَّنِيَ الضُّرُّ And remember Job when. 84 he cried to his Lord, saying, ‘Affliction has touched me, and Thou art the Most Merciful of all who show mercy. '2414 34:13-14; 38:38-39. 38:42. وَاَنْتَ اَرْحَمُ الرَّحِمِينَ In the present verse the adjective I Kings 9:20-21 where we read:" And used about the wind is a (violent) while in 38:37 it is (gentle) which shows that though the wind blew fast, it was gentle and did no damage to Solomon's ships. The implied reference in the present and the preceding two verses may be to the great military might and economic progress and prosperity which the Muslims were to attain in the heyday of their glory which they achieved during the reigns of the Omayyad and the Abbasid dynasties. 2413. Commentary: The word meaning a rebel and recalcitrant person and also one who is expert in anything (2:15), the verse means to say that the non-Israelite people whom Solomon subjugated were engaged on several arduous works by his orders. They worked as carpenters, iron-smiths, divers etc. , professions which members of a subject race generally adopt when living under a ruling race. The fact that Solomon had subjugated peoples of many communities is evident from 2108 all the people that were left of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, which were not of the children of Israel, their children that were left after them in the land, whom the children of Israel also were not able utterly to destroy, upon those did Solomon levy a tribute of bond service unto this day. " In the words "who dived for him" refer to diving in the Persian Gulf for taking out pearls by divers who were employed for that purpose by Solomon. 2414. Commentary: Job is mentioned in the Bible as having lived in the land of ‘Uz. According to some authorities Mesopotamia was his native place. It appears, however, that ‘Uz was situated somewhere in the north of Arabia, between Syria and the Gulf of 'Akaba. It is said that Job lived there before the departure of the Israelites from Egypt. According to some Jewish writers he lived about 200 years before Moses. According to