His saying, exalted and majestic is He:

"Say, 'Indeed, the favor is in the hand of Allah; He gives it to whom He wills. And Allah is All-Encompassing, All-Knowing.'" [Al-Imran: 73]

"He selects for His mercy whom He wills. And Allah is the Possessor of great favor."

"And among the People of the Book are some who, if you entrust him with a qintar, he will return it to you; and among them are some who, if you entrust him with a dinar, he will not return it to you unless you are standing over him."

In His saying, the Most High: "Say, 'Indeed, the favor is in the hand of Allah'" [Al-Imran: 73] to His saying, "the great" is a refutation of the Jews in their saying, "The prophethood of Musa is eternal, and Allah will not give anyone like what He gave to the Children of Israel of prophethood and honor," and the rest of what is in the verse of the word "All-Encompassing" and others has been previously mentioned.

Then He informed, exalted is He, about the People of the Book that they are two types regarding trustworthiness. The purpose of the verse is to condemn the treacherous among them and to refute their opinion and their lies against Allah in their permissibility of the wealth of the Arabs. And in the reading of Ubayy ibn Ka'b, "timanahu" with a ت and ي in both letters, and likewise: "timanna" in Yusuf, Abu Amr al-Dani said: It is the language of Tamim.

Qadi Abu Muhammad, may Allah have mercy on him, said:

And I do not see it except as a Qurashi language, which is the breaking of the ن of the plural as in نَسْتَعِينُ, and the ألف of the speaker as in the saying of Ibn Umar: 'I do not think it,' and the ت of the addressee as in this verse. They do not break the ي in the absent, and with it Ubayy ibn Ka'b read in "timanna" and Ibn Mas'ud and al-Ashhab al-'Uqayli and Ibn Wathab. And the saying about the qintar has been previously mentioned at the beginning of the surah.

And the majority of the people read, "he will return it to you" with a kasrah on the ه which is the pronoun of the qintar, and likewise in the other which is the pronoun of the dinar. Abu Amr, Hamzah, and Asim and al-A'mash agreed on the iskan of the ه, and likewise all that resembles it in the Qur'an, such as: "We will enter him into Hell" and "We will give him" and "We will appoint him" except for a letter that has been reported from Abu Amr that he broke it, which is His saying, exalted is He: "Then throw it to them" [An-Naml: 28]. Abu Ishaq said: And this is the iskan that has been narrated from these is a clear mistake because the ه should not be jazm, and if it is not jazm, it should not be made silent in connection. As for Abu Amr, I see that he was taking the kasrah lightly, so he made a mistake regarding it, as he made a mistake regarding "Your Creator" and it has been narrated from him by Sibawayh - and he is precise in such matters - that he breaks it lightly.

And the qintar in this verse is an example of much wealth, which includes more than a qintar and less. As for the dinar, it is possible that it is likewise, an example of what is little, and it is possible that he means a class that does not betray except in a dinar or more, and he did not intend to mention the treacherous in less, as they are the common rabble.

And the majority of the people read: "Dumta" with a dammah on the dal. Ibn Wathab, Al-A'mash, Abu Abdur-Rahman As-Sulami, Ibn Abi Layla, Al-Fayyad ibn Ghazwan, and others read: "Dimta" and "Dimtum" with a kasrah on the dal in all of the Qur'an. Abu Ishaq said: From their saying: Dimta, it is like Nimt, you sleep, and it is a language. And the meaning of Dama is: to remain in a certain state, and the ta'dweem on something is the circling around something. From it is the saying of Dhī al-Rummah: (p-261)

"And the sun is bewildered in the sky, it has a circling."

And the dawam is the dizziness that takes hold of a person's head, so he sees things revolving for him. And the circling of a bird in the sky is its stability when it settles and turns around, and the water that is permanent and others is that which seems to revolve around its center.

And His saying: "Qaiman" has two possible meanings. Al-Zajjaj, Qatadah, and Mujahid said: Its meaning is: standing upon the fulfillment of your debt;

They mean by types of fulfillment from urging and litigation to the rulers. So, according to this interpretation, the state of this permanent one is not considered, rather the wording is from the standing of a person upon his work, that is, his striving in it. And As-Suddi and others said: "Qaiman" in this verse means: standing on its head, in the known state, and that is the end of urging, because the meaning of that is that he is at the beginning of another task that he wants to face. And a group of the scholars went to this interpretation and derived from the verses the permissibility of imprisonment, because the one who is standing over him is his creditor, so he prevents him from his actions outside of the judgment, and there is no difference between preventing actions and imprisonment.

And this verse and what follows it were revealed regarding what has been narrated about a group of Arabs who had debts owed to a people from the People of the Book. When those Arabs embraced Islam, the Jews said to them: We will not pay you anything when you have abandoned your religion that you were upon, so the verse was revealed regarding that. It has been narrated that the Children of Israel believed in the permissibility of taking the wealth of the Arabs because they were idolaters. When Islam came and those Arabs who embraced Islam did so, the Jews remained among them with that belief, so the verse was revealed protecting against that. And the Messenger of Allah, blessings and peace be upon him, said: "Indeed, everything from the affairs of ignorance is beneath my feet, except for trust, for it is entrusted to the righteous and the wicked."