And when he mentioned the sharp sword, for the long and short lifetimes, of night and day, it was as if it was said: they will annihilate every strong thing and will wear out every new thing. So he turned to his saying: ﴿And We did not make﴾ meaning by what We have of the greatness that necessitated Our uniqueness in permanence ﴿for a human﴾. And he confirmed the negation of this making by establishing the preposition, saying: ﴿Before you, immortality﴾, looking at his saying: ﴿And they were not immortal﴾ [Al-Anbiya: 8] after his saying: ﴿Is this anything but a human like you?﴾ [Al-Anbiya: 3]. And this is one of the strongest proofs that Al-Khidr, peace be upon him, died. It is responded that long life is not immortality as in the case of Jesus, peace be upon him. However, his saying, blessings and peace be upon him: "O Allah, if this group is destroyed, no one will be worshipped on earth after today," and his saying: "There will not remain on the surface of the earth today anyone who is a hundred years old," and his saying: "We wish that Moses, peace be upon him, had been patient so that we could have been told about their affair," in such examples, indicates his death in a way that does not accept the claim of his life after it except with something more apparent than that.

And when their saying ﴿Rather, he is a poet﴾ [Al-Anbiya: 5] indicated that they said: We await him with the doubt of death as happened to others among the poets, it was necessary that no one should wait for another's harm except what he is assured of his safety from it. The denial was directed at them and the consolation [for him] was by preventing their gloating in his saying: ﴿So if﴾ meaning do they wish for your death? So if ﴿you die, they are﴾ meaning specifically ﴿the immortal﴾. The denial is the estimation of their immortality upon the estimation of his death which necessitates denying their wishing for his death. The truth of the hamzah is its entry into the conditional, which is: so they are, and it was only [paired with the condition because] the questioning has the head.