His saying, exalted and majestic is He:

﴿And put your trust in the Mighty, the Merciful﴾ ﴿Who sees you when you stand﴾ ﴿and your movement among those who prostrate﴾ ﴿Indeed, He is the Hearing, the Knowing﴾ ﴿Shall I inform you upon whom the devils descend?﴾ ﴿They descend upon every lying, sinful one﴾ ﴿They listen and most of them are liars﴾ ﴿And the poets, the deviators follow them﴾ ﴿Do you not see that they wander in every valley﴾ ﴿and that they say what they do not do?﴾

Nafi', Ibn 'Amir, Abu Ja'far, and Shaiba read: "So put your trust" with the letter 'fa', and likewise in the manuscripts of the people of Medina and the Levant. The majority read with the letter 'wa', and likewise in the other manuscripts. And He, exalted is He, commanded him to put his trust in Him in all his affairs. Then He mentioned the attributes that reassure the one who puts his trust, which are the might and mercy mentioned at the end of the stories of the nations mentioned in this surah, and He included therein the victory of every prophet over the disbelievers, and the concern for his matter and looking to him.

And His saying, exalted is He: ﴿Who sees you when you stand﴾ is an expression of perception. The apparent meaning of the verse is that He intended the standing of prayer, and it is possible that He means all actions. This is the interpretation of Mujahid and Qatadah. And His saying: ﴿and your movement among those who prostrate﴾ means: among the people of prayer, that is, your prayer with the praying ones, as said by Ibn 'Abbas, Ikrimah, and others. Mujahid also said: the turning of your eyes and your gazes to those who prostrate when you see them from behind you.

Qadi Abu Muhammad, may Allah have mercy on him, said: And this meaning is foreign here.

And Ibn 'Abbas, may Allah be pleased with him, and Qatadah also said: He meant: your movement among the believers, so he expressed them as those who prostrate. And Ibn Jubayr said: He meant the prophets: that is, your movement is like the movement of others among the prophets.

And His saying, exalted is He: ﴿Shall I inform you upon whom the devils descend?﴾ here is an inquiry and a pause for confirmation. And "the liar" is the one who lies, and "the sinful" is the one who commits sin. He means the soothsayers because they used to receive from the devils the one word that was heard from the heavens and mix with it a hundred lies. So if that word was true, it became a cause of misguidance for whoever heard it. And His saying: "they listen" means the devils. The implication of that is that the devil who eavesdrops also lies about what he heard; this is in most cases, and the pronoun in "they listen" - that is, they lie - could refer to the soothsayers.

And when He mentioned the soothsayers with their lies and falsehoods, which necessitate the negation of their words from the words of Allah, exalted is He, He followed that by mentioning the poets and their condition to alert to the distance of their words from the words of Allah, exalted is He, in the Qur'an. For some of the disbelievers said in the Qur'an: Indeed, it is poetry. And this is a metaphor for the poetry of ignorance. Al-Naqqash narrated from Al-Suddi that it was about Ibn al-Zab'ari, Abu Sufyan ibn al-Harith, Hubayrah ibn Abi Wahb, Musafi' al-Jumahi, Abu 'Izzah, and Umayyah ibn Abi al-Salt.

Qadi Abu Muhammad, may Allah have mercy on him, said: And the first two are among those who repented and believed, may Allah be pleased with them. And every poet who mixes in mocking or praising for desire, and slanders the chaste, and speaks falsehood enters into the verse.

Nafi' read "they follow them" with a silent ت and an open ب, and this is the reading of Abu Abdullah and Al-Hasan - with a difference from him - while the others read with a stressed ت and a broken ب.

People have differed in the saying of His: "the misguided ones." Ibn Abbas, may Allah be pleased with both of them, said: they are the narrators. He also said: they are those who find their poetry pleasing, accompanying them. And Ikrimah said: they are the rabble who follow the poet, and this is the most preferred of the sayings. Mujahid and Qatadah said: "the misguided ones" are the devils. And His saying, the Exalted, "in every valley they wander" is an expression of their mixing and their involvement in every kind of worthless and false speech, and their beautifying the ugly and vilifying the good, as Ibn Abbas, may Allah be pleased with both of them, and others have said.

And His saying, the Exalted, "and that they say what they do not do" mentions their engagement and their deep involvement in the metaphor of speech until it leads to lying. However, in this wording, there is an excuse for some of them at times. It is reported that Al-Nu'man ibn Adiyy, when Umar ibn Al-Khattab, may Allah be pleased with him, appointed him to Maysan, and he said to his wife the famous poetry, Umar, may Allah be pleased with him, dismissed him. He argued against him with His saying, the Exalted, "and that they say what they do not do," so Umar, may Allah be pleased with him, absolved him from the punishment regarding wine. And Jabir ibn Abdullah narrated from the Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him, that he said: "Whoever walks seven steps in poetry is written among the misguided ones," as mentioned by Asad ibn Musa and mentioned by Al-Naqqash.