And when He presented the greatest mercy with protection and support that necessitates survival, He followed it with what completes survival by saying: ﴿Is he who﴾ and indicated proximity by knowledge and distance by exaltation and greatness by saying: ﴿This﴾. He indicated the knowledge of everyone of Him by His lofty attributes from which His sound and established actions arise. He said: ﴿Who﴾ [and omitted the return for the action to Him, saying: ﴿Provides for you﴾ -] meaning in a manner of renewal and continuity, His kindness does not cease ever, although He encompasses all things, and there is no negligence from Him regarding anything. ﴿If He withholds His provision﴾ by withholding the means from which it arises, and its reaching you is like rain. Even if the provision is present or abundant and easy to obtain, if He places the morsel in his mouth, Allah withholds from him the power of swallowing, and the people of the heavens and the earth are unable to justify that morsel for him.

And when the signs of His power and the comprehensiveness of His knowledge were established in a general manner and then in a specific manner, that was a cause for the denier to return and for the obstinate to feel ashamed, and for the ignorant to know and for the heedless to be alerted. Thus, it was appropriate to say: Have they returned from their denial? He then turned his speech to the unseen, turning away from them as a warning of the fall of their status, the weakness of their understanding, and the strength of their heedlessness: ﴿But they persisted﴾ meaning they continued in foolishness, not out of caution and bravery. Al-Razi said in Al-Lawami': And persistence is the plunging into a matter with many distractions from it. ﴿In obstinacy﴾ meaning they are characterized by denial and arrogance against the truth and a departure into gross corruption. ﴿And aversion﴾ meaning (p-257) fleeing from good consideration and listening, to which their nature called, and that dominated them until it surrounded them, although no one among them has the power to bring about something beneficial or to repel something harmful, and the call to that is desire and anger.