Transliteration:( In ahsantum ahsantum li anfusikum wa in asaatum falahaa; fa izaa jaaa'a wa'dul aakhirati liyasooo'oo wujoo hakum wa liyadkhulul masjida kamaa dakhaloohu awwala marratinw wa liyutabbiroo maa a'law tatbeera )
If you do good, it is for yourselves, and if you do evil, it is against yourselves [19]. When the second promise came [20], it was to make your faces fearful [21], to enter the Mosque [22] as they had entered it the first time, and to utterly destroy whatever they had gained control over [23].
✅ 19. Responsibility for Deeds
The verse teaches a profound lesson: good or evil returns to the doer.
The Arabic letter "Laam" here carries the meaning of ‘on’ — meaning the burden of sin falls upon the one who commits it.
While you cannot be punished for someone else’s evil, if you cause another to sin, you share in the blame.
✅ 20. The Second Promise of Punishment
This refers to the second wave of corruption by the Bani Israel — notably the murder of Hazrat Yahya (peace be upon him).
In response, the Roman and Persian kings took control over them.
Herod, the Roman king, entered Jerusalem, saw the blood of Hazrat Yahya, and initially was told it was sacrificial blood.
After killing 70,000 Jews, the truth was confessed.
This occurred after Hazrat Isa (peace be upon him) was raised to the heavens.
✅ 21. Fearful Faces
The invaders inflicted such humiliation and suffering that the signs of fear and disgrace were visible on their faces.
This reflects public disgrace and inner devastation, as seen in the reign of tyrants like Herod.
✅ 22. Desecration of the Mosque
These tyrannical kings entered and violated the sanctity of Jerusalem (Bayt al-Maqdis), just as invaders had during the first punishment.
This warns us that sins of the community lead to desecration of holy sites at the hands of disbelievers.
✅ 23. Utter Destruction
The invaders completely devastated cities, ruined wealth, and brought destruction.
Sufi wisdom links these punishments to widespread societal sins:
Not giving Zakaat leads to famine.
Adultery brings death and chaos.
The tafsir of Surah Al-Isra verse 7 by Ibn Kathir is unavailable here.
Please refer to Surah Isra ayat 4 which provides the complete commentary from verse 4 through 8.
(17:7) Whenever you did good, it was to your own advantage; and whenever you committed evil, it was to your own disadvantage. So, when the time of the fulfilment of the second promise arrived, (We raised other enemies that would) disfigure your faces and enter the Temple (of Jerusalem) as they had entered the first time, and destroy whatever they could lay their hands on.[9]
9. The historical background of the second degeneration and its chastisement is as follows: The moral and religious fervor with which the Maccabees had started their movement gradually cooled down and was replaced by love of the world and empty external form. A split appeared among them and they themselves invited the Roman General, Pompey, to come to Palestine. Pompey turned his attention to this land in 63 B.C. By taking Jerusalem he put an end to the political freedom of the Jews. But the Roman conquerors preferred to rule their dominions through the agency of the local chiefs rather than by direct control. Therefore, a local government was set up in Palestine which eventually passed into the hand of Herod, a clever Jew, in 40 B.C. This ruler is well known as Herod the Great. He ruled over the entire Palestine and Jordan from 40 to 4 B.C. On the one hand, Herod patronized the religious leaders to please the Jews, and on the other, he propagated the Roman culture and won the goodwill of Caesar by showing his loyalty and faithfulness to the Roman Empire. During, his reign, the Jews degenerated and fell to the lowest ebb of moral and religious life.
On the death of Herod his kingdom was subdivided into three parts. His son, Archelaus, became the ruler of Samaria, Judea and northern Edom. In A.D. 6, however, Caesar Augustus deprived him of his authority and put the state under his Roman governor, and this arrangement continued up till A.D. 41. This was precisely the time when Prophet Jesus (peace be upon him) appeared to reform the Israelites whose religious leaders opposed him tooth and nail and even tried to get him the death sentence by the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate.
The second son of Herod, Herod Antipas, became the ruler of Galilee and Jordan in northern Palestine, and he was the person who got Prophet Yahya (John) (Peace be upon him) beheaded at the request and desire of a dancing girl. Herod’s third son, Philip, succeeded to the territories bounded on one side by river Yermuk and on the other by Mount Hermon. Philip had been much more deeply influenced by the Roman and Greek cultures than his father and brothers. Therefore the preaching of the truth could not have even so much effect in his land as it had in the other parts of Palestine.
In A.D. 41, the Romans appointed Herod Agrippa, the grandson of Herod the Great, ruler of the territories that had once been under Herod himself. Coming into power this man did whatever he could to persecute the followers of Prophet Jesus (peace be upon him) and used all the forces at his disposal to crush the movement that was functioning under the guidance of the disciples to inculcate fear of God in the people and reform their morals.
In order to have a correct estimate of the condition of the common Jews and their religious leaders, one should study the criticisms leveled by Prophet Jesus (peace be upon him) on them in his sermons contained in the four Gospels. Even a religious man like Prophet John (peace be upon him) was beheaded before their eyes and not a voice was raised in protest against this barbarity. Then all the religious leaders of the community unanimously demanded death sentence for Prophet Jesus (peace be upon him), and none but a few righteous men were there to mourn this depravity. Above all, when Pontius Pilate asked these depraved people, which condemned prisoner he should release, according to the custom, at Passover, Jesus or Barabbas the robber, they all cried with one voice Barabbas. This was indeed the last chance Allah gave to the Jews, and then their fate was sealed.
Not long after this, a serious conflict started between the Jews and the Romans, which developed into an open revolt by the former between A.D. 64 and 66. Both Herod Agrippa II and the Roman procurator Floris failed to put down the rebellion. At last, the Romans crushed it by a strong military action and in A.D. 70 Titus took Jerusalem by force. About 133000 people were put to the sword. Sixty seven thousand made slaves, and thousands sent to work in the Egyptian mines and to other cities so that they could be used in amphitheaters for being torn by wild beasts or become the practice target for the sword fighters. All the tall and beautiful girls were picked out for the army of conquest and the Holy City of Jerusalem and the Temple were pulled down to the ground. After this the Jewish influence so disappeared from Palestine that the Jews could not regain power for two thousand years and the Holy Temple could never be rebuilt. Afterwards the Roman Emperor, Hadrian, restored Jerusalem but renamed it Aelia. The Jews, however, were not allowed to enter it for centuries. This was the calamity that the Jews suffered on account of their degeneration for the second time.
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