'In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful' And when He, glorified and exalted is He, mentioned His promise and precaution in reforming His people, He explained His matter at the time of the promise and their state after His absence. He said: ﴿And when Moses came to our appointed time﴾ meaning: at the beginning of the time that We had decreed for the conversation; and when the station of majesty was overwhelming and it was not possible to comprehend the words with Him, He turned to the station of honor and said: ﴿And He spoke to him﴾ meaning: without an intermediary ﴿his Lord﴾ meaning: the One who does good to him with various kinds of goodness, the One who bestows upon His people with various kinds of favor. What Moses, blessings and peace be upon him, heard from the people of the Sunnah among the Ash'ari is the eternal attribute without sound or letter, and there is no distance in that just as there is no distance in the vision of His essence, glorified and exalted is He, and it is not a body, nor an accident, nor a substance, and there is nothing like Him. And from Ibn Abbas, may Allah be pleased with both of them, that He, glorified and exalted is He, spoke to him at all the appointed times and wrote for him the tablets, and it was said: He only spoke to him at the beginning of the forty, and the first is more appropriate. And when He spoke to him with the attribute of lordship, looking to compassion and kindness, and the vision was permissible, he longed for the vision with a longing that he could not contain due to the pleasure he experienced from the sweetness of the conversation. So he asked for it, knowing that it was permissible. ﴿He said﴾ [dropping the tool as is customary for the people of closeness] ﴿My Lord, show Yourself to me﴾ meaning: Your most sacred essence by lifting the veil from me so that I may be able to see. This is the meaning of the saying of the scholar Ibn Abbas: 'Grant me [and it is established that it is the vision of the eye by His saying in response to the command] ﴿Look﴾ [meaning: direct the gaze of the eye] and He pointed to His greatness, glorified and exalted is He, and the exalted status of His majesty (p-78) [the exaltation of greatness, not distance] by the preposition of the end [after He indicated by omitting the call tool to the ultimate closeness by kindness]. So He said: ﴿To You﴾ meaning: so that I may see You.

And when glorified and exalted is He had decreed that he, peace be upon him, would not see Him in this world, he said, negating the intended meaning, which is the vision, not its prerequisite, which is the gaze that is the staring with the eye. "You will never see Me." And glorified and exalted is He indicated by this phrase the possibility of His being seen, as He did not say: "I will not be seen," or "no one will see Me." Then He further clarified that by linking it to something possible, saying: "But look at the mountain," indicating a mountain from his time, which is the greatest mountain there. And He further emphasized the indication of the vision by expressing it with a tool of doubt and following it with a possible matter, saying: "If it remains in its place," meaning: it finds its stability and complete existence. And He indicated the distance of the vision as well as the grandeur of what is sought from it by saying: "Then you will see Me," meaning: with a promise that there is no falsehood in it. "So when his Lord manifested Himself," meaning: the Benefactor to him with all gifts and prohibitions. And He clarified by His expression with the preposition that it is the manifestation of His closeness and specificity; if He had expressed it with 'upon' for example, it would have been a different matter, saying: "to the mountain," meaning: by revealing to the mountain what He willed from the veil of His greatness. "He made it dust," meaning: crushed, and dusting and crushing are two brothers. "And it fell," meaning: it collapsed. "Moses fell down unconscious," meaning: fainted with a great sound. It was known that the meaning of the correction is that you will not be able to stand firm for My vision in this abode nor know that now, but you will know it by an example I show you, which is the mountain. For the perishable - as it has been reported from Imam Malik - it is not appropriate for him to see the Eternal. "So when he regained consciousness," meaning: from his fainting, "he said: Glorified are You," meaning: I declare You free from my asking You for what You have not permitted. "I turn to You in repentance," meaning: from that. "And I am the first of the believers," meaning: I am the foremost in hastening to believe in all that You have informed me of, all that these verses contain. His expression with belief is very appropriate for the absence of vision because the condition of belief is that it should be in the unseen. For indeed, there have been two verses regarding our Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him; one of them may refer to the vision by expressing it with Muslims rather than believers in His saying: "And I am the first of the Muslims." And the second hints at its absence, which is: "The Messenger has believed." And Allah knows best. And all of this is a rebuke to his people and a reprimand for them in their worship of the calf and a deterrent for them from that, and a reminder for them that divinity is coupled with greatness and majesty, very far from those of bodies, for He knows that they will repeat the worship of idols. So He affirmed for the true God the speech and the rejection of the vision by the veil of pride and greatness and the crumbling of the mountain at His manifestation and the establishment of the legislation guiding to the most upright path, hinting at the calf. And to this, His saying, exalted is He: "Do they not see that He does not speak to them," refers.