Zaynab bint Jahsh: The Divorce of Zayd, the Rebuke of Q 33:37, and the End of Adoption

A Verse Recited Against Its Own Reciter

Medina, the fifth year after the Hijra. In the mosque a newly revealed passage of the Qur'an is being recited, and it contains something remarkable: a rebuke aimed at the very man reciting it. "You concealed within yourself what Allah was to disclose, and you feared the people, while Allah has more right that you fear Him." The man addressed is the Prophet of Islam. The subject is a marriage — his marriage to Zaynab bint Jahsh, his own first cousin, who until recently had been the wife of Zayd: the freedman he had adopted as a son, a man all of Medina called "Zayd, son of Muhammad."

What exactly had the Prophet concealed in his heart? On that single question the earliest authorities of Islam left behind explanations that do not say the same thing — and the disagreement is preserved, side by side, in the pages of al-Tabari.