The Manipulation of 5:19
Does "to explain things to you" commission a library of hadith? The Quran assigns its explanation to God - and this verse carries a further announcement.
I. The Verse and the Claim
"O people of the scripture, our messenger has come to you, to explain things to you, after a period of time without messengers, lest you say, 'We did not receive any preacher or warner.' A preacher and warner has now come to you. GOD is Omnipotent." (5:19)
Hadith advocates read the word yubayyin - to make clear - as a divine commission for the prophet to explain the Quran through his own sayings, making the hadith an authorized companion volume to the revelation. Test the claim against the Book and it produces an immediate contradiction.
II. The Explanation Belongs to God
God reserved the Quran's explanation to Himself, in the passage describing how the revelation reaches the prophet:
"Then it is we who will explain it." (75:19)
The whole passage (75:16-19) assigns the Quran's collection, its recitation, and its explanation to God - three verbs, one Subject. And He names Himself the Quran's instructor: "The Most Gracious. Teacher of the Quran" (55:1-2). If 5:19 commissioned Muhammad's personal explanations as religion, 75:19 would be false. Since the Quran contains no contradictions, yubayyin in 5:19 must mean something other than authoring a second literature - and the Quran supplies the meaning by using the same verb elsewhere, together with its opposite:
"GOD took a covenant from those who received the scripture: 'You shall proclaim it to the people, and never conceal it.'..." (3:187)
The antonym of bayyana is concealment. To make clear, in the Quran's own usage, is to deliver openly and completely - to hold nothing back - not to append commentary. That is exactly the messenger's office as the Quran defines it: "O you messenger, deliver what is revealed to you from your Lord - until you do, you have not delivered His message..." (5:67). The messenger makes the message clear by proclaiming all of it; God makes it understood in the hearts He guides. Two roles, two verses, no contradiction - and no hadith commissioned anywhere in either.
III. What This Verse Also Announces
On this site's translation, 5:19 carries a further dimension. The verse addresses the people of the scripture about a messenger arriving "after a period of time without messengers" - and Rashad Khalifa's header over it reads "God's Messenger of the Covenant." His footnote presents the verse as the fulfillment of the prophecy of Malachi 3:1 and Quran 3:81, with the arithmetic signature it bears: the gematrical value of "Rashad" (505), plus "Khalifa" (725), plus the sura number (5), plus the verse number (19), totals 1254 - nineteen times sixty-six. The verse the hadith advocates bent toward their books was announcing, by its own numbers, the messenger through whom the Quran's proof - the mathematical code - would make things clear in a way no commentary ever could.
Either way the manipulation fails. As a statement about Muhammad, "to explain" means to proclaim without concealment - the opposite of a warrant for extra-Quranic law. And as the announcement its numbers identify, the verse belongs to the proof that renders the hadith enterprise obsolete: God explained His Book Himself - through its verses (75:19) and through the code that authenticates them.