(20:123) and said:¹⁰⁴ "Get down, both of you, (that is, man and Satan), and be out of it; each of you shall be an enemy to the other. Henceforth if there comes to you a guidance from Me, then whosoever follows My guidance shall neither go astray nor suffer misery.

(20:124) But whosoever turns away from this Admonition from Me shall have a straitened life;¹⁰⁵ We shall raise him blind on the Day of Resurrection,"¹⁰⁶

104. Not only did God pardon them, He also showed Adam and Eve the right path for the future and instructed them on how they should follow that path.

105. This verse says that the unrighteous will have a wretched life in this world. This does not mean that all those who are unrighteous will necessarily face poverty. What is meant is that such people will be unable to find peace and contentment. Someone may be a millionaire, and yet their life will be plagued by discontent and restlessness. Likewise, even the ruler of a vast empire may be intensely unhappy and suffer mental agonies. For it is quite possible that the success of such men has been brought about by blatantly evil means with the net result that they suffer great mental pain. Even when they reproach their consciences this only adds to their suffering. Such men will always remain in conflict with their consciences and everything around them will deprive them of true peace and happiness.

106. This marks the conclusion of Adam’s story. If one reads this story carefully, as narrated here and elsewhere in the Qur’an, it leads to the belief that true vicegerency of the earth was initially conferred upon Adam in Paradise. Paradise may have been located in the heavens or it may have been here on this earth. Being God’s vicegerent, Adam enjoyed an abundance of provisions including food, drink, clothing, and shelter, with angels at his beck and call to do his bidding. During this period Adam did not have to worry about his day-to-day personal needs; instead his energy was conserved for the higher requirements of his vicegerency.

Before granting Paradise to man for his permanent settlement, it was necessary for God to test Adam’s mettle so as to bring his strengths and weaknesses into the open. Accordingly, a test was arranged, the conclusion to which demonstrated that Adam was susceptible to temptations, was unable to firmly adhere to his commitments, and was liable to forgetfulness and negligence. Thereafter, Adam and his children were entrusted with provisional or probationary, rather than permanent vicegerency. This probation will end on the Last Day. However, God also decided to deprive Adam of the gratuitous provisions for his livelihood during this period of probation; a privilege he had enjoyed earlier in Paradise. So, up until the Next Life, man is required to strive to make his living. He will, however, continue to enjoy, as before, control over the earth and earthly creatures. The point of all this was to test whether man, who had been invested with free will, obeyed God or not, and to see, whenever he suffered a lapse resulting from negligence, whether or not he would mend his ways and return to the right path after being reminded and warned and instructed. The final decision about man, whether he has been obedient to God or disobedient, will be made later.

So far as man’s tenure of this worldly life is concerned — and this is the period which covers his probationary vicegerency — God maintains a full and detailed record of it. Those who are declared successful in the light of this record, will be endowed with permanent vicegerency on the Day of Judgement — in addition to receiving immortality and abiding dominion. (It may be recalled that Satan had lured man into error by promising him immortality.) It is at this stage that the whole of this earth will be turned into Paradise and will be given over to those righteous servants of God who were obedient to Him during the term of their probationary vicegerency, and who, whenever they lapsed into sin, soon reverted to obedience.

Those who look upon Paradise as an infinite opportunity to eat, and laze in indolence are cherishing a false notion. Instead there will be ample opportunity in Paradise for man to make constant progress, without suffering any regression. In Paradise he will occupy himself with God’s vicegerency, and will do so with the full assurance that there will be no possibility for him to suffer any failure. It is impossible, however, to imagine what kind of progress man will make and the tasks he will perform. To imagine these things is as difficult as it would be-for a child to imagine, during his childhood, the happiness and bliss of matrimonial life. The Qur’an, therefore, refers only to those pleasures of Paradise which resemble the pleasures available to man in the present world.

It will not be altogether irrelevant at this point to cast a glance at the Biblical version of the story of Adam and Eve:

Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put-the man whom he had formed. [He planted] the tree of life also in the midst of the’ garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day you eat of it you shall die.

And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.

Now the serpent was more subtle than any other wild creature that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God say, ‘‘You shall not eat of any tree of the garden’’?’ And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but God said, ‘‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’’ But the serpent said to the woman: ‘You will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave ‘some to her husband, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, ‘Where are you?’ And he said, ‘I heard the sound of thee in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.’ He said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?’ The man said, ‘The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree and I ate.’ Then the Lord God said to the woman, ‘What is this that you have done?’ The woman said, ‘The serpent beguiled me, and I ate.’ The Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you above all cattle, and above all wild animals; upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.’ To the woman he said, ‘I will greatly multiply your pain in child bearing, in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.’ And to Adam he said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘*You shall not eat of it’, cursed is the ground because of you, in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.

In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’ The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins, and clothed them.

Then the Lord God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever’ — therefore, the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden (Genesis 2: 7~9, 15~17, 25 and 3: 1-23).

Those who proclaim loud and long that the Qur’anic stories are borrowed from the Bible would be well advised to compare the Biblical version given above with the Qur’anic account.