The Quranic verses 33:4-6 contain several expressions of communal cohesion within the Islamic umma, including descriptions of the Prophet's relationship to the Believers and their relationships to one another. This paper analyzes twenty-five tafsīrs of these verses from various historical and ideological contexts, to provide a diachronic overview of how exegetes have understood the relationship between the Quranic text, history, and communal boundaries. Exegetes give most elements of the Quranic text a specific historical context through asbāb al-nuzūl. However, some elements are relegated to this distant past, while other elements appear continually relevant, linking the Quranic past to the present. The exegetes treat as more dynamic those phrases that delimit the internal and external boundaries of the umma, such as "the Prophet is closer to the believers than they are to themselves," and "possessors of relationship are closer to one another...than believers and emigrants" (33:6). Such phrases provide fodder for exegetes to bolster their own communal identities; for instance, the Shia read "possessors of relationship" as the Imams, while some Sufis understand them to be spiritual brethren. In contrast, inclusive phrases that bring outsiders into the umma get truncated and even forgotten, such as, "if you do not know their fathers, they are your brothers in religion and your mawālī" (33:5). While scholars have long noted the importance of the early Islamic mawālī, exegetes do not mention them here; even historian-exegetes such as Ṭabarī and Ibn Kathīr sever the link between Quranic mawālī and early Islamic mawālī. Instead, exegetes ossify the term in long-past individuals such as Zayd ibn Ḥāritha. The term's usefulness for expressing communal belonging had apparently faded by the time of the earliest tafsīrs. In all cases, exegetes mention no historical events between the revelation of the Quran and their present day—the "middle distance" of history disappears from exegetical memory. I propose that historians can fruitfully attempt to re-forge this severed link between the Quran and the first century of Islamic history. As an authoritative text, the Quran sets certain identity categories (such as mawālī) that remain relevant even as they morph to fit changing circumstances. If we are to understand who the early Islamic mawālī were, or trace other forms of relationship in the first century AH, we must search for historical glimpses of how early Muslims invoked the language of the Quran to express their communal identities.