And when it was that perhaps his negation might imply a deficiency in it, he said, beginning to clarify its perfection and to magnify its virtue and favor: "That" meaning: the great guidance of high rank. "The guidance of Allah" meaning: the one that encompasses the attributes of perfection. "He guides" meaning: He creates guidance. "By it" meaning: through the establishment of it. "Whom He wills of His servants" meaning: whether he has a father who teaches him or whether he has someone who leads him to misguidance first; and when he clarified the virtue of guidance and specified the heads of its people, he threatened whoever abandoned it, whoever he may be. So he said, manifesting the glory of divinity with absolute richness, exalting Himself above what was observed in others even with the slightest glance: "And if they had associated partners" meaning: those whom we mentioned from His praise, what you have heard and we clarified of our specificity for them, something of associating partners, and Allah has protected them from that, and He established through them the crooked paths, and He illuminated through them the darkness of the earth in its length and breadth. "It would have nullified from them" meaning: it would have corrupted and fallen. "What they were doing" meaning: even if it was of the utmost precision by the laws of knowledge.