If you say: What is the difference between His saying "So look" and His saying "Then look"? [Mahamud said: "If you say, what is the difference between His saying 'So look' and His saying 'Then look' ... etc."] Ahmad said: The clearer interpretation of this is to make the command to travel in both places the same, so that this becomes a reason for looking. Where the letter 'fa' (ف) is used, it is for showing causation, and where 'thumma' (ثم) is used, it is to indicate that looking is the intended purpose of traveling, and that traveling is merely a means to it and nothing more. There is a great difference between the intended purpose and the means, and Allah knows best. I say: Making looking [the word 'looking' might be 'by looking'] a result of traveling in the saying "So look" is as if it is said: Travel for the sake of looking, and do not travel like the heedless. As for His saying "Travel in the land, then look," its meaning is the permissibility of traveling in the land for trade and other benefits, and the obligation of looking at the signs of the destroyed. This is indicated by 'then,' to show the distance between the obligatory and the permissible.