And when He, glorified and exalted is He, nullified the divinity of others which ignorance led to, and continued until He concluded with the knowledge that necessitates the understanding of the truth, the decree was a nullification of their illusory doubt which says, "If the Most Merciful had willed, we would not have worshipped them" [Az-Zukhruf: 20]. So bring to mind all that has been revealed to you and contemplate it to the utmost. Do you see in it any obscurity in the divinity of anything other than Allah? He then added His words as a negation of an auditory proof, as indicated by His saying, "Or have We given them a Book?" [Az-Zukhruf: 21]. "And ask those whom We have sent" meaning about what We possess of greatness. And when it was possible to recognize it from the effects of the messengers, it was only for Musa and 'Isa and among them from the prophets of the Children of Israel, blessings and peace be upon them, who preserved their tradition from the Torah, the Gospel, the Psalms, and the Book of the Prophets. He said, affirming the understanding of some time: "Before you."

And when their followers had altered and changed, so there was no trust in them, He expressed it by the messengers and said: "From Our messengers" meaning by the reading of their followers of the books which they had distorted some of. And you made your Book a guardian over them, for when they read it in your presence and presented it to you, you knew its meanings and exposed their distortions and clarified the agreement of all the books by refuting what they had mixed of its ambiguous verses to its definitive ones. The intended meaning of this is similar to the meaning of the verse of Yunus: "So ask those who read the Book before you" [Yunus: 94] and from the verse of the Prophets: "This is a reminder of what is with me and a reminder of what is before me" [Al-Anbiya: 24], with an additional indication to their distortion. The one truly questioned is the miraculous Qur'an on the tongue of the Messenger who all the messengers testified to, who took from them the covenant of faith in him and following him. With this clarification, the weakness of the statement of those who said that the intended meaning is the questioning of the messengers truly for what they gathered for him, blessings and peace be upon him, in Al-Maqdis on the night of Isra, became evident. For the intended meaning of this is only to rebuke the disbelievers among the Arabs and those whom he honored from the People of the Book by their saying: "Your religion is better than his religion, and you are more rightly guided than he is." For when they brought their books, you knew their definitive indications of His exclusivity, glorified is He, in worship, as I have explained in this book, which refutes the ambiguous parts of it to the definitive ones. Ibn Jarir made it similar to His saying, "And if you disagree in anything, refer it to Allah and the Messenger if you believe in Allah and the Last Day" [An-Nisa: 59]. And he said: It is known that the meaning of that is: refer it to the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of His Messenger, blessings and peace be upon him. He said: Thus, he sufficed with the mention of the messengers instead of the mention of the books. This is exactly what I said, and if the intended meaning was the actual questioning and the questioning of all the messengers, he would have said "before you" by omitting "those" to encompass all - and Allah knows best.

And when the one being asked mentioned it, emphasizing it by what the statement necessitated of sending and adding it to him, he mentioned the one being asked about by saying: ﴿Have We made﴾ meaning We have permitted and commanded and are pleased with what belongs to Us of greatness and complete power, from what contradicts that. And he established the insignificance of anything else by saying: ﴿besides﴾ and he added by saying: ﴿the Most Merciful﴾ meaning the One whose mercy encompasses all existing things. ﴿gods﴾ And when it was made for every people a direction they turn to in their worship of a god, and something tangible due to the predominance of imaginations over understandings that they witness, and sometimes a stubborn person would insist on it, he said, taking precautions: ﴿they are worshipped﴾ meaning by any worshipper in some way. And when the luxurious ones are inclined to disdain anyone who comes to them with a response against their corrupt aims with a type of disdain, as the disbelievers of Quraysh said: ﴿Why was this Qur'an not sent down to a great man from either of the two cities?﴾ [Az-Zukhruf: 31] They continue to reject this and similar things from misguidance until the Lord of Glory overcomes them by what He has sent them through His messengers, either by destroying them or otherwise, even if they are at the height of strength. Glorified is He, He presented the story of Musa, blessings and peace be upon him, as a witness to that by what Fir'aun said to Musa, blessings and peace be upon him, in that regard and by his destruction despite his strength and the saving of Bani Israel despite their weakness, and as consolation for the Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him, and as an encouragement.