To obliterate faces, meaning to erase the outlines of their features, such as the eyes, eyebrows, nose, and mouth, so we turn them on their backs, making them like their backs, which are the rears, obliterated like them. The 'fa' indicates causation, and if you take it as a consequence, it refers to the fact that they were threatened with two punishments: one following the other, turning their faces back after obliteration. The meaning is that we obliterate faces and turn them upside down, with faces to the back and rears to the front. Another interpretation is that by 'obliteration' is meant the heart and change, just as the wealth of the Copts was turned into stones. By 'faces,' it refers to their heads and their dignitaries, meaning before we change the conditions of their dignitaries, we strip them of their prominence and dignity, and we clothe them in humiliation and retreat, or we return them to where they came from. This refers to the lands of the Levant, intending the expulsion of Banu Nadir. If you ask: to whom does the return in the saying (or we curse them) refer? I say: to the faces if the dignitaries are meant, or to the owners of the faces. Because the meaning is before we obliterate the faces of a people or it returns to (those who were given the Book) in a manner of shifting: or we curse them, or we recompense them with transformation, as we transformed the people of the Sabbath. If you ask: where is the occurrence of the threat? I say: it is conditional upon faith. It may be that it is conditional upon disbelief. Some of them have believed. It is said that it is awaited, and there must be obliteration and transformation for the Jews before the Day of Resurrection. Allah, the Exalted, has threatened them with one of two matters: the obliteration of faces from them, or cursing them. For the obliteration is a change in the conditions of their leaders, or their expulsion to the Levant. One of the two matters must occur, and if it is not the other, then cursing has occurred, for they are cursed by every tongue. The apparent curse is the common one rather than transformation. Do you not see His saying: (Say, 'Shall I inform you of something worse than that as a penalty from Allah? For whom Allah has cursed and has become angry with, and made from them apes and pigs.') And the command of Allah is accomplished, so one of the two matters must occur if they do not believe.