And when He rebuked them for their actions and their words, and declared His curse upon them, He frightened them with the manifestation of that in tangible forms. So He said - approaching them with the intensity of anger -: "O you who..."; calling them from a place of distance; "have been given the Book"; and He did not attribute the giving to them, belittling them. He did not suffice with a portion of it, because it is not enough in knowledge by mere acknowledgment except for all of it. "Believe in what We have revealed"; meaning: gradually, as We revealed the Torah likewise; regarding what We have of the greatness that has appeared in its miraculous nature, and its informing of the unseen, and the subtleties of knowledge, from what is with you and otherwise, regarding its elegance and brevity. And He made known their obstinacy and their envy by His saying: "confirming what is with you"; in that they are present with it, and by it in its essence, they are acknowledging.

And when He commanded them and cut off their argument, He warned them; so He said - alleviating for them by the indication with the preposition that whenever faith occurs from them in a time before the obliteration, He delayed it from them -: "before We obliterate"; meaning: We erase; "faces"; for obliteration in language means erasure; and it applies to changing some qualities. Then He caused to arise from that His saying: "then We will return it"; so the estimation is: "before We erase the trace of faces by returning it"; "to their backs"; meaning: by making what is towards the front of the head to the direction of the back, and what is towards the back to the direction of the front, while keeping the appearance of the face as it is; or the intended meaning of the return to the back is the transfer from a state to what is beneath it from its opposite, by making it in the state of the nape, in which there is no mark from a mouth or otherwise, so that the intended meaning of obliteration is the wiping away of what is in the face from meanings. Ibn Hisham said: "We obliterate": we wipe it; so we make it even, and nothing is seen in it of an eye, or a nose, or a mouth, or anything that is seen in the face; and likewise: "So We blinded their eyes" [Al-Qamar: 37]; the blinded eye is that which has no slit between its eyelids. And it is said: "I obliterated the book and the trace"; so nothing is seen from it; and the face in this estimation is in its reality. Then He frightened them with another type of obliteration; so He said - adding to "We will return it" -: "or We will curse them"; meaning: We will distance them greatly from the form of humanity by turning their faces or all of their beings into the form of apes; "as We cursed the companions of the Sabbath"; when We said to them: "Be apes, despised"; and the face in this last estimation is an expression of the whole; so it is then from what has been used in its reality and its metaphor; and it is permissible that it be one of the faces; so the return of the pronoun to it is a usage; and the intended meaning of the return to the backs is to make them lowly and insignificant, from the lowest. And Allah - glorified and exalted is He - knows best.

And when that was a strange matter and a wondrous decree; and the decree was: "Indeed, the command of Allah concerning them in that - as you have known - is decisive"; He followed it with the informing that His power is encompassing; and that the aspects of His decrees are not limited; so He said - adding to what He has decreed -: ﴿And the command of Allah﴾; meaning: His judgment; and His decree; and His will in everything He wills from them; and from others; by that and by other than that; because He has the greatness that has no limit; and the majesty that overwhelms the descriptions before it; ﴿It is done﴾; meaning: it is certainly happening; there is no failure for it at all; so there must be the occurrence of one of the two matters; if they do not believe; and some of them have believed, so it is not correct that they did not believe; because faith has indeed occurred from them.