Translation of an ayah of Suratil Baqarah - 2

Please translate the following from Suratil Baqarah searching any new verbs/nouns that have not yet been encountered. Please provide any additional explanation where you see necessary.


يَا أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ اعْبُدُوا رَبَّكُمْ


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السلام عليكم

يَا - O (ye)!
أَيُّهَا - O ye (who are)*
النَّاسُ - the people
اعْبُدُوا - worship (plural)
رَبَّكُمْ - your Lord!

* There is no breakdown of this vocative particle in Hans Wehr, but only that the feminine attached pronoun is present at the end. I am confused as to why this is the case, is النَّاسُ (the people, Man) which is an intangible concept, perhaps a feminine word? I tried to search if it was, but I couldn't find it anywhere.

Also, why are two vocative particles used - I think perhaps for emphasis of the later command of 'Worship!' (from the verb عَبَدَ - he worshipped/served), it could be that the meaning is in the tone of 'O ye who are (created) PEOPLE, should ye not know (from the intellect bestowed upon ye) that thay ye must Worship?!'

Please post in your helpful thoughts...جزاكم الله خيراً

مع السلامة

يَا أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ O People

When I was reading through the Madina Book 2 I came across some of the rules of using يَا and I vaguely remember scribbling down some notes which said when يَا is used with a noun that starts with ال then أَيُّهَا is inserted in the sentence to give, in this case يَا أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ as opposed to يَا النَّاسُ

This brought to mind when we read in the salah the Atahiyyat in the prayer when we say



In essence, we are saying ‘May peace be upon you O Prophet…’ and some may say the more correct way to read the Atahiyyat now is to say



In one narration the Sahbah quoted saying the former whilst the Prophet (saw) was alive and among them and switched to the latter after his (saw’s) death.

I just found that interesting when I thought about the Attahiyat, a digression non the less...

Moving on...

اعْبُدُوا Worship (m3+)
رَبَّكُمْ Your Lord

السلام عليكم

1) From what I can remember, I think the emphatic vocative يا أيّها translates to 'O you who is/are.'

2) النّاس is literally 'the people' but in dictionaries such as Al-Mawrid, the meaning is also 'Mankind', as this is a name for a specific set of people, i.e. 'us', then that is why it is definite.

Would anyone like to add anything إن شاء الله ?

مع السلامة