'Or you say,' meaning: 'If We had not sent to them the messengers, 'Indeed, our fathers associated partners before,' meaning: 'before we existed.' 'And we were offspring after them,' so we did not know for ourselves a nurturer other than them. We were therefore followers of them, and following them occupied us from reflection. And no messenger came to us to alert us, which causes their denial in their saying: 'Will You destroy us for what the falsifiers have done?' meaning: 'of our fathers.' Abu Hayyan said: 'The meaning is that the disbelievers, if no covenant had been taken from them nor had a messenger come to them with what the covenant included of the oneness of Allah and His worship, they would have had two excuses: one of them is, 'We were heedless,' and the other is, 'We were followers of our ancestors.' So how is it, while the sin is only upon the one who approached us and misled us - it has ended.

And among what supports the meaning of representation is the hadith of Anas in the Sahih: "Allah says to the least punished of the people of Hell: If you had what is in the earth of anything, would you use it to ransom yourself? He said: Yes. Allah said: I asked you for something easier than this while you were in the loins of Adam, that you not associate anything with Me, but you insisted on associating." This is because the explicit mention of the fathers contradicts the acknowledgment of its reality. The taking while in the loins is only by establishing the evidence and affirming the truth in a manner that prepares for reasoning by structuring the intellect upon the law that leads to the intended goal when freeing oneself from desires and obstacles. This which occurred in the interpretation of the verse does not contradict the hadith of the questioning in the realm of the atoms, considering its authenticity; it has been narrated from many very different sources which I have mentioned in my book: The Secret of the Spirit, including in the Muwaṭṭa and the Musnad of Ahmad and Isḥaq ibn Rāhawayh and Muḥammad ibn Naṣr al-Marwazī and Abū Yaʿlā al-Mawṣilī and the Mustadrak of al-Ḥākim and the Book of the Two Hundred by Abū ʿUthmān al-Ṣābūnī from companions and followers, both raised and stopped, among them are ʿUmar and Ubayy ibn Kaʿb and Abū Hurayrah and Ḥakīm ibn Ḥizām and ʿAbdullāh ibn Salām and ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿAmr and Ibn ʿAbbās and Ibn Masʿūd, may Allah be pleased with them, and from Muḥammad ibn Kaʿb and ʿAṭāʾ ibn Yasār and Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib and Abū al-ʿĀliyah, may Allah have mercy on them. It does not contradict because in some of its chains from Ubayy ibn Kaʿb, may Allah be pleased with him, it is reported that he, glorified and exalted is He, said after he questioned them: "Indeed, I bear witness against you, the seven heavens and the seven earths, and I bear witness against you, your father Adam, that you say on the Day of Resurrection: Indeed, we were unaware of this, so do not associate anything with Me. For I send to you My messengers to remind you of My covenant and My pledge, and I send down to you My books." They said: We bear witness that You are our Lord and our God, there is no Lord for us other than You. Thus, the questioning in the hadith is in its proper context, as a lesson for our father Adam, peace be upon him, and those who were present from creation, and a stopping for them at the marvelous power of Him and His great knowledge, and the witnessing of what was witnessed from the creatures means that He established in it the evidence that would serve as a proof against them in case they associate, like the testimony of a witness that cannot be refuted. And there is nothing in any of the narrations that contradicts this; the result is that two covenants were taken upon us: one is present, to which the intellects are guided, which is the establishment of evidence, and the other is a verbal one informed by the messengers. All of this is for the purpose of informing about the increased care for this human type due to its noble honor and the great matter intended by it. And Allah is the Grantor of success.