ثواب و عقاب‌های شگفت‌انگیز

Some of the rewards and punishments recounted in the Holy Qur’ān and the traditions of the Ahl al-Bayt are viewed as unbelievable, exaggerating, and unexpected; that is, a very great reward and punishment or consequence is stated for an apparently small action that, at first impression, seems to be very astonishing and disproportionate. The obvious problem with these texts is their discordance with Divine justice system. Thus, many of the religious propagators feel that the content of these texts would disturb people’s mental system concerning religious knowledge and is a source of misunderstanding and equivocation. Another problem is the difference existing in the rewards of some actions.
After mentioning various examples of this issue in the verses and traditions and classifying them, the present article states and examines the opinions of the interpreters and commentators of ḥadīth. The multiplicity and variety of the attempts made by the interpreters and commentators of ḥadīth indicates that the originality of these problems is very serious to them and the apparent aspects of the verses and traditions are not acceptable to them. Therefore, they have tried to explain away the context of the verse or the tradition in a justified approach and by various probabilities, including: weakness of the chain of transmission, exclusiveness to a particular subject, allegorization for educational purpose, failure of the unworthy, inability of man’s perceptions of the image of the otherworldly rewards, etc.