Surah Al-Insan Ayat 2 (76:2 Quran) With Tafsir

Ala-Maududi

(76:2) Verily We created man out of a drop of intermingled sperm^[2] so that We might try him,^[3] and We therefore endowed him with hearing and sight.^[4]

2. “From a mixed sperm drop”: From the intermingling ofthe male sperm with the female ovum and not separatelyfrom the sperm or the ovum. During sexual intercoursenormally 200-500 million sperms are deposited into thefemale birth canal. The sperms swim and reach site ofmixing with ovum in 4-6 hours on an average time. Most ofthe sperms are lost in this journey. Chemical changes occurduring this travel and sperms remove their protectivecovering from their heads while getting ready to releasespecial chemicals from the heads in their attempts andpreparation to penetrate into the ovum. Usually, only onesperm is allowed to fuse and mix with the ovum. (Ref.Maternity and Gynecology Care, Mosby Year BookPublishing Inc. St Louis Missouri USA Chapter 7, Page162).

3. This shows man’s real position in the world and theposition of the world for man. He is not like the trees andanimals that the object of his creation be fulfilled on theearth itself, and he should die and perish here after he hasplayed his appointed role over a period of time according tothe law of nature. Furthermore, this world is neither aplace of punishment for him, as the monks think, nor aplace of rewards as the believers of the law oftransmigration think, nor a place of entertainment andenjoyment, as the materialists think, nor a battlefield, asthe followers of atheists think, but in fact it is a place of testand trial for him. That which he regards as his age, is infact the time given to him for the test. Whatever powersand capabilities he has been given in the world, the thingsthat have been placed under his control and authority, thevarious positions and capacities in which he functions, andthe relationships that he enjoys with other people, all theseare the countless manners of the test and this test continuestill the last breath of his life. The result is not to beannounced in this world but in the Hereafter when all hisanswer books will have been assessed, decision will be givenwhether he has come out successful or failed. And hissuccess or failure wholly depends on what he thought ofhimself while he functioned here and how he answered thequestions that were given to him here. If he believed that hehad no God, or that he was the slave of many gods, andwhile answering the questions he thought that he was not tobe held accountable before his Creator in the Hereafter, hiswhole lifework went wrong. And if he regarded himself asthe slave of One God and worked in the way approved byGod, with the accountability of the Hereafter always inview, he stood successful in the test. This theme hasoccurred at many places in the Quran.

4. The words sami (hearing) and baseer (seeing) in theoriginal text actually imply being “sensible and intelligent”.These words of the Arabic language are never used inrespect of the animal although it also hears and sees. Thus,hearing and seeing here do not imply the powers of hearingand seeing which have been given to the animals too, butthose means through which man obtains knowledge andthen draws conclusions from it. Besides, since hearing andseeing are among the most important means of knowledgefor man, only these two have been mentioned briefly;otherwise it actually implies giving man all those senses ofthe body by which he gathers information. Then the sensesgiven to man are quite different in their nature from thosegiven to animals, for at the back of every sense he has athinking brain, which collects information gained throughthe senses; arranges it, draws conclusions from it, formsopinions, and then takes some decisions which become thebasis of his attitude and conduct in life. Hence, after saying,”We created man in order to try him,” to say, “therefore,We made him capable of hearing and seeing” actuallycontains the meaning that Allah gave him the faculties ofknowledge and reason to enable him to take the test.Obviously, if this were not the meaning and the meaning ofmaking man hearing and seeing just implied the one whocould hear and see, then a blind and deaf person wouldstand exempted from the test, whereas unless a person isutterly devoid of knowledge and reason, there can be noquestion of his being exempted from the test.

Ibn-Kathir

The tafsir of Surah Al-Insan verse 2 by Ibn Kathir is unavailable here.
Please refer to Surah Insan ayat 1 which provides the complete commentary from verse 1 through 3.