The account of the table spread

"When the disciples said: O Issa ibn Maryam, can your Lord send down upon us a table spread from the heaven? He said: fear Allah, if you are believers. They said: we wish to eat from it, and that our hearts be assured: and that we know that you have told us the truth: and that we be among its witnesses. Issa ibn Maryam said: Allah, our Lord: send down upon us from the heaven a table spread, to be for us a festival, for the first and the last of us: and a sign from You: and provide for us: You are the best of providers.

Allah said: verily, I will send it down upon you: whoever disbelieves among you after that, I will punish him with a punishment with which I will punish no one among the worlds."

Surat al-Maïda, 112-115

We mentioned in the tafsir the athars that came about the descent of the table, from Ibn Abbas, and Salman al-Farisi, and Ammar ibn Yasir, and others of the early generations: their content is that Issa commanded the disciples to fast thirty days; and when they completed them, they asked Issa to send down from the heaven a table spread, that they might eat from it and their hearts be assured thereby, knowing that Allah had accepted their fast and answered their request: and that it be for them a festival, on which they would break their fast on the day of its breaking: and that it suffice the first and the last of them, the rich and the poor. Issa exhorted them concerning that, and feared for them lest they not give thanks, and not fulfill the conditions of the right: they insisted with him that he ask that of his Lord.

When they did not desist, he rose to his place of prayer, wearing a woolen cloth, standing firmly on his two feet, lowering his head, his eyes streaming with tears, humbling himself to Allah in supplication and asking, that they be answered for what they sought: Allah the Most High sent down the table spread from the heaven, and the people watched it descending between two clouds: it drew near little by little, and whenever it approached, Issa asked his Lord to make it a mercy, not a punishment, and to make it a blessing and a safety. It kept drawing near until it settled before Issa, covered with a napkin. Issa rose and uncovered it: in the name of Allah, the best of providers. Upon it were seven fish, and seven loaves, and vinegar, and pomegranates and fruits: and it had an immense fragrance.

He said: be: and it was: then he commanded them to eat from it: we do not eat until you eat: you are the ones who began asking for it. They refused to eat from it first: so he commanded the poor, the needy, the sick and the paralyzed, who were about one thousand three hundred: they ate from it, and everyone with an infirmity, or an affliction, or a chronic disease was healed. The people regretted not eating from it, seeing the healing of the state of those. It would descend once each day: and the people ate from it: the last of them ate as the first ate: it fed about seven thousand.

Then it came down one day after another, like the she-camel of Salih whose milk they drank one day after another. Then Allah commanded Issa to restrict it to the poor, or the needy, excluding the rich: that grieved many of the people, and their hypocrites spoke about it: so it was lifted entirely, and those who spoke about it were transformed into pigs.

Ibn Abi Hatim and Ibn Jarir reported it together: al-Hasan ibn Qaza'a al-Bahili reported to us: Sufyan ibn Habib reported to us: Sa'id ibn Abi Aruba reported to us: from Qatada: from Khilas: from Ammar ibn Yasir who said: the table spread descended from the heaven: bread and meat: and they were commanded not to betray, nor store away, nor set aside for tomorrow: they betrayed, stored away and set aside: so they were transformed into monkeys and pigs. Then Ibn Jarir reported it: from Bundar: from Ibn Abi 'Adi: from Sa'id: from Qatada: from Khilas: from Ammar, as an interrupted report; and this is more sound: and likewise he reported it by the route of Simak: from a man of Bani 'Ijl: from Ammar, as an interrupted report: and that is the correct view. And Allah knows better. And Khilas, concerning Ammar, is a discontinued chain: were this hadith authentic and raised, it would be decisive in this story; because the scholars differed about the table: did it descend or not?

The majority holds that it descended, as these athars indicate, and as is understood from the evident context of the Quran: verily, I will send it down upon you: as Ibn Jarir established. And Allah knows better. Ibn Jarir reported, with an authentic chain to Mujahid, and to al-Hasan ibn Abi al-Hasan al-Basri: it did not descend: they insisted on its descent: whoever disbelieves among you after that, I will punish him with a punishment with which I will punish no one among the worlds.

The Christians do not know the account of the table spread: it is not mentioned in their book, even though its account is among that which the motives urge to transmit. And Allah knows better. We treated the speech on that at length in the tafsir: let it be written from there, and whoever wants to review it, let him look there. To Allah belong the praise and the favor.

Section.