And when he mentioned this trial after mentioning at the beginning of the Surah what is glorified and exalted is He of greatness from the vastness of the kingdom, the abundance of favors, and the kindness to all of creation, it was the right of every created being to recognize their Lord, whoever they may be, especially if they possess this quality, so that they may attain His kindness and be strengthened by it against their peers. He followed that by revealing the trial, stating that they have no insight, so He said, "And they said," and He manifested in the context of concealment the description that was presented, that it necessitates their blindness, saying, "Those who do not hope," meaning they do not have intellects because they have forgotten "Our meeting." Thus, they do not act in a way that they hope for our affirmation for them after death based on what they know of the greatness that whoever hopes for it will be happy, and whoever turns away from it will perish. Consequently, their intellects became subservient to their desires, so they began to recognize inanimate objects that they called their lords, and they sought them out and rubbed against them in hope for the impossible, and they became engrossed in misguidance. He mentioned hope for this purpose, although it necessitates the absence of fear: "If only," meaning why not and why do they not?

And when their intention, due to their ignorance, was to see them all at once, He expressed it by the term 'sending down,' saying, "It was sent down," meaning in whatever manner it was from whatever sender it was, "the angels upon us," meaning as it was sent down upon him in what they claim, "or we see our Lord," with what He has towards us of kindness and what we have of greatness through power, wealth, and others, so He commands us with what He wants without the need for an intermediary.

And when this saying is something that no human should dare to utter, for it contains an objection to the One whose greatness cannot be defined, nor can the purposes of His wisdom be comprehended, He said, beginning with a letter of expectation for what the context has guided to as a response to one who might have asked: What is their condition in this? "Indeed," meaning by our might, indeed, "they have been arrogant," meaning they sought or indeed found arrogance. And when there was no fruit for their arrogance in the apparent, because it does not return harm to anyone other than themselves, He said, "In themselves," meaning by seeking to see the angels.

And when the essence of their matter was that they sought the rank of the Prophet whose intermediary is the angel, and they added to it the vision of all the angels taking from Allah, and they further increased that by seeking the vision, He said, "And they were exceedingly arrogant," meaning they exceeded the limit in arrogance by seeking to see all the angels and the vision of the mighty King. He emphasized this meaning to suit the occasion with His saying: "A great arrogance," and it is clear that they did not say this except out of arrogance and injustice, that what came to them from the signs, the greatest of which is the Qur'an, certainly indicated their incapacity to bring forth anything like it in truthfulness from him ﷺ about Allah in all that he says. And in the goodness of this resumption and the essence of this context, there is an indication of astonishment without the expression of astonishment; the meaning is: How great is their arrogance and how immense is their tyranny!