His saying, exalted and majestic is He:

﴿And when We lifted the mountain above them as if it were a shade, and they thought that it was falling upon them, 'Take what We have given you with strength, and remember what is in it, that perhaps you may be conscious of Allah.'﴾

﴿And when your Lord took from the children of Adam from their backs their descendants and made them testify against themselves, 'Am I not your Lord?' They said, 'Yes, we have testified.' Lest you say on the Day of Resurrection, 'Indeed, we were of this unaware.'﴾

"'Nataqna' means: We uprooted and raised. So, the meaning of 'nataq' is the uprooting of something. The Arabs say: 'I have pulled the cream from the mouth of the jug.' And from it is the saying of the poet:

And they uprooted our dreams, the heavy burdens.

And 'the natiq' is the womb that uproots the child from the man. And from it is the saying of the Nabighah:

They were not deprived of the beauty of the meal, and their mother ∗∗∗ ∗∗∗ crushed upon you with a natiq of males.

And in the hadith, the Messenger of Allah, blessings and peace be upon him, said: 'You should marry the virgins, for they have the most fruitful wombs and the sweetest mouths.' This is the hadith. And this word has come in the Quran instead of this term in this story as 'We raised.' And 'above them' indicates the raising with an additional indication that the mountain was uprooted by the angels and Allah commanded it.

It has been narrated that when Moses, peace be upon him, came to them with the Torah and said about Allah, the Exalted: 'This is the Book of Allah, will you accept it with what is in it? For it contains the clarification of what is lawful for you and what is prohibited for you, and what He has commanded you and what He has forbidden you.' They said: 'Recite to us what is in it, for if its obligations are easy and its limits are light, we will accept it.' He said: 'Accept it with what is in it.' They said: 'No.' So, Moses consulted them, and they consulted three times. Then Allah, exalted and majestic is He, revealed to the mountain, and it was uprooted and raised above their heads. Moses, blessings and peace be upon him, said to them: 'Do you not see what my Lord is saying? If you do not accept the Torah with what is in it, I will surely throw you with this mountain.' Al-Hasan al-Basri said: 'When they saw the mountain, each one of them fell prostrating on his left eyebrow, and he looked with his right eye at the mountain in fear that it would fall upon him. Therefore, there is no Jew on earth who prostrates except on his left eyebrow, saying: 'This is the prostration that lifted the punishment from us.'

And 'the shade' is what overshadows. From it is ﴿In shades of clouds﴾ [Al-Baqarah: 210], and from it is ﴿The punishment of the Day of shade﴾ [Ash-Shu'ara: 189], and from it is the saying of As'id ibn Hudhayr to the Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him: 'I recited last night, and the house was covered like a shade in it were like lamps.' The Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him, said: 'That is the tranquility that descended for the Quran.' If it is said: If the mountain is a shade, what is the meaning of 'as if'? The answer is that humans are accustomed to these earthly masses being shades when they are on pillars. So, when the mountain was without pillars, it was said: ﴿As if it were a shade﴾, meaning: as if it were on pillars. And 'they thought' means, the interpreters said: they were certain.

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

And the matter is not as I see it; rather, it is a place of predominance of suspicion along with the persistence of hope. How can they be certain of its occurrence while Musa, peace be upon him, says: 'The throwing of it is only on the condition that they do not accept the Torah.' And suspicion only occurs and is used in certainty when that which is certain has not come out to the senses. This has been clarified in what has preceded in this book. Then it was said to them at the time of the raising of the mountain: 'Take what We have given you with strength.' So they took it and committed to all that it contained of hardship and ease, yet they did not fulfill it. And the majority of the people read: 'And remember,' while Al-Amash read - as narrated by Abu Al-Fath from him -: 'And remind yourselves.' And His saying: 'Perhaps you may' indicates their hopefulness. This is a strictness in preserving it and being concerned with its matter.

And His saying, the Exalted: 'And when your Lord took' - the meaning is: and remember when your Lord took. And His saying: 'from their backs' - the grammarians said: it is a substitute for the saying: 'from the children of Adam.' The words of this verse necessitate that the taking was only from the children of Adam from their backs, and there is no mention of Adam in the verse according to the wording. And the hadiths have been transmitted in the interpretation of this verse from the Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him, through Umar ibn Al-Khattab, may Allah be pleased with him, and Abdullah ibn Abbas, may Allah be pleased with both of them, and others, that when Allah, the Mighty and Majestic, created Adam - and in some narrations: when He descended Adam to the earth in a place from the land of Sind, as said by Ibn Abbas, may Allah be pleased with both of them. In some of them, it is said that this was in Numan, which is Arafat and what is adjacent to it, as also said by Ibn Abbas, may Allah be pleased with both of them and others - He wiped over his back (and in some narrations with His right hand, and in some narrations He struck his shoulder) and extracted from it - meaning from the wiping or the strike - the souls of his children. In some narrations, like dust, and in some of them, like mustard. And Muhammad ibn Kab said: 'Indeed, they are the souls which were made to have examples.' And Abdullah ibn Amr, may Allah be pleased with both of them, narrated from the Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him, that he said: 'They were taken from his back as one takes with a comb from the head, and Allah made for them intellects like the size of an ant of Sulayman, peace be upon him. And He took a covenant from them that He is their Lord and that there is no deity other than Him, so they acknowledged that and committed to it. And He informed them that He would send messengers to them reminding and calling them, so some of them bore witness against others.' Ubayy ibn Kab said: 'The heavens bore witness against them, so there is no one born until the Day of Resurrection except that a covenant was taken from him on that day and in that standing.' And Al-Suddi said: 'The disbelievers were given the covenant that day unwillingly under the guise of caution.'

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

This is the summary of the lengthy narrations, and it seems that the words of these hadiths do not align with the words of the verse. Many people have made efforts to reconcile between them. Some said: The verse refers to this procreation that occurs in the world, and 'He took' means: He created based on what is known. And that (the witnessing) is at the time the accountable person reaches maturity and has been given understanding, and this craft that indicates the creator has been established for him. This meaning is inclined towards by al-Zajjaj, and it is a meaning that the words can bear. However, the interpretation of Umar ibn al-Khattab and Ibn Abbas, may Allah be pleased with them, regarding the verse is based on the mentioned hadith, and their narration of it is from the Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him.

And al-Jurjani elaborated on this issue, and the essence of his words revolves around that the wiping and the extraction of offspring from the back of Adam is according to the hadith. It was said regarding the verse: He took from their backs, as the extraction from the back of Adam, who is the origin, is an extraction from the backs of his children, who are the branches. The branch and the origin are one thing, leading to much discourse that cannot withstand criticism.

Others said: All that is in the hadith regarding the wiping with his right hand and striking his shoulder and similar matters is merely an expression of the creation of that soul from him. The right hand is an expression of power, or the wiper may be an angel by the command of Allah, the Exalted and Majestic, thus the hadith includes the beginning of the story and the creation of the soul from Adam. This is an addition to what is in the verse. Then the verse includes what occurred after this regarding taking the covenant, and the soul is present beings. It can bear two meanings; one of them is that 'He took' is an agent for 'covenant' or 'pledge' which you can estimate after His saying: 'their offspring,' and His saying: 'from their backs' is to clarify the type of prophethood, as the intended meaning of all is procreation. He shares in the term 'the children of Adam' his sons from his loins and his sons by compassion and affection. His saying: 'their offspring' is a substitute for 'the children of Adam,' and the other meaning is that since every soul there has a relation to the one that is from its back, the specification of that relation was taken from the back since it will emerge from it. Thus, it is the new one. The meaning is: And when they were designated by this relation and recognized by it, that is a taking of something. And 'He took' - in this case - is an agent in 'their offspring' and does not mean wiped and created, but rather their creation preceded as the mentioned hadith has preceded. The hadith adds a meaning to the verse, which is the mention of Adam and the first creation of the soul and how it was.

And al-Tartushi said: This covenant is obligatory upon mankind even if they do not mention it in this life, just as divorce is obligatory upon one who has been witnessed to it even if he forgets it, unlike this which is not an interpretation nor from its path.

Nafi', Abu Amr, and Ibn Amer read: 'their offspring' in the plural of the plural, while Ibn Kathir, Asim, Hamzah, and al-Kisai read: 'their offspring' in the singular, and the singular here is a plural. The statement regarding the term 'offspring' has already been mentioned in Surah Al-Imran.

It has been narrated in the stories of this verse that the prophets, peace be upon them, were among those souls. Adam, peace be upon him, saw Dawood and was impressed by him. He said: Who is this? It was said: A prophet from your descendants. He asked: How long is his lifespan? It was said: Sixty years. He said: Increase his lifespan by forty years from my lifespan, and it was increased. It was said: Adam's lifespan was a thousand years. When he completed nine hundred and sixty years, the Angel of Death came to him. Adam said to him: I have forty years left. The Angel of Death returned to his Lord and informed Him. He said to him: Tell him: You have given it to your son Dawood. Dawood, peace be upon him, died after he had disputed for the forty years. Al-Dahhak ibn Muzahim said: Whoever dies young is in the first covenant, and whoever reaches maturity has taken the second covenant, meaning the one in this rational life now. Al-Zajjaj narrated from a group that they said: This verse indicates that every soul, when born and reaching maturity, has a covenant upon it to believe and know Allah. This saying has been mentioned before, and it is a weak statement that deviates from the transmitted hadiths and disregards them.

And His saying, glorified and exalted is He: "We bear witness" can be understood as some of the souls saying to others, meaning: We bear witness against you so that you do not say on the Day of Resurrection: We were heedless of knowing Allah and believing in Him. This would be a statement from these to those. This was mentioned by Al-Tabari. Based on this, it is not appropriate to pause at His saying, glorified and exalted is He: "Indeed." It is also possible that His saying, glorified and exalted is He: "We bear witness" is from the words of the angels, so it is appropriate to pause at His saying: "Indeed." Al-Suddi said: The meaning is that Allah and His angels said: We bear witness, and it was narrated by Abdullah ibn Umar, may Allah be pleased with them, from the Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him.

The seven reciters, except for Abu Amr, read: "That you say" addressing those present. Abu Amr alone read: "That they say" narrating about those absent. This is the reading of Ibn Abbas, may Allah be pleased with him, Ibn Jubair, and Ibn Muhaysin. The two readings can be interpreted according to the two mentioned meanings, and "that" is in the accusative case on the assumption of: out of fear that.