ʿIlm al-Kalām Archive · Quranic Verses · Q 57:25
We have indeed sent Our messengers with clear signs, and We sent down with them the Scripture and the Balance, so that people may uphold justice. And We sent down iron, in which is mighty force and benefits for humanity — and so that Allah may know those who support Him and His messengers in the unseen. Indeed, Allah is Powerful and Mighty.
Tabatabai identifies the verse's three-element structure as theologically precise: God sends (1) messengers, (2) Scripture (kitab), and (3) the Balance (mizan) — and the purpose is not merely that the Scripture be available, but that "people may uphold justice" (li-yaquma al-nasu bi-l-qist). The active verb yaqumu means "that people may stand upright in justice" — justice is an orientation of the human being, not merely a legal code. The Scripture provides the norms; the Mizan provides the ontological structure within which those norms make sense; the messengers embody both in a living person.
In al-Mizan, Tabatabai argues that the Mizan is not the same as the Scripture. The Scripture is the revealed word; the Mizan is the divine standard of weight and measure by which all things are evaluated. Q 55:7-9 establishes that God set up the Mizan as the structural principle of creation itself: "He raised the heaven and set up the Mizan. Do not transgress in the Mizan. Uphold the weighing in justice and do not reduce the Mizan." The Mizan is therefore prior to the Scripture — it is the ontological principle of which the Scripture is the verbal articulation.
Tafsir al-Burhan tradition — the ma'sum Imam as the living Mizan
The Imami tradition develops the identification: if the Scripture (Quran) is the verbal articulation of the Mizan, and the Mizan is the ontological standard of divine justice, then the Imam — as the being who embodies the Quran's living interpretation — is the Mizan al-Hayy (the living Mizan). Imam al-Sadiq's statement in Al-Kafi: "We are the Mizan" (nahnu al-mizan). This is not a claim to institutional power — it is an ontological claim: the Ahl al-Bayt are the living standard by which all claims to truth, justice, and divine authority are weighed. The Quran without the Imam who embodies it is the scale without the calibration — correct in form, but unable to function as the actual standard of measurement.
Imam Ali in Nahj al-Balagha (Khatba 1) states that the divine creation operates through the Mizan principle: God established the proportions of all things according to His knowledge before creating them. The Mizan is the divine-proportionality principle — the qist (equity/balance) that pervades creation. The prophetic mission, on this reading, is not to introduce an external law into a lawless world — it is to restore the Mizan that human zulm (injustice, imbalance) has violated. Q 57:25 thus names the structure of every prophetic mission: clear signs + Scripture + Mizan = the three instruments for restoring ontological balance against zulm.
Mulla Sadra's ontological proof: justice (qist, 'adl) is not a social convention — it is the reflection of wujud (existence) in the order of relations. A just order is one in which each thing occupies the ontological position appropriate to its degree of wujud. An unjust order (zulm) is one in which things are displaced from their ontological positions — beings of lower wujud-intensity are placed in positions that require higher intensity, and vice versa. The Mizan, in Sadra's reading, is the principle of wujud-calibration: restoring each thing to its proper ontological station.
The Convergence
Imami tradition: the Imam is the living Mizan (mizan al-hayy) — Nahnu al-Mizan (we are the Balance). Akbarian tradition: the Insan al-Kamil is the ontological center around which the divine proportions of creation are maintained. Sadra's synthesis: the Imam-as-living-Mizan and the Insan al-Kamil-as-ontological-center are the same function described in two vocabularies. The Imam's presence in creation is the condition of possibility for justice — because justice is the reflection of proper ontological proportion, and the Imam is the being who most completely embodies the divine ontological proportions. A world without the Imam is a world without a calibrated Mizan — the scales exist but cannot weigh truly.
The iron (hadid) mentioned in the verse's second sentence — "We sent down iron, in which is mighty force and benefits" — receives from Sadra the reading of existential density: iron represents the material level at which the Mizan principle must ultimately be enforced. The prophetic mission operates through clear signs (spiritual), Scripture (verbal-legal), and Mizan (ontological standard) — but these must ultimately be capable of material enforcement through the instrument of quwwa (force/power). The verse thus articulates the full structure of prophetic governance: spiritual clarity, legal articulation, ontological standard, and material capacity for enforcement — the four instruments of a complete prophetic mission.