From their backs is a substitute for the children of Adam, a part of the whole. And the meaning of taking their offspring from their backs is: extracting them from their loins as descendants and making them bear witness against themselves. And His saying, "Am I not your Lord?" They said, "Yes, we bear witness," is by way of representation and imagination. [Mahamud said: "This is by way of representation and imagination..." Ahmad said: "The use of representation is better, and it has been established by the Shari'ah. As for calling it imagination regarding the words of Allah, the Exalted, it is rejected, and there is no evidence for it. We have often denied this term. Then the principle is established that the apparent meaning, as long as it does not contradict reason, must be accepted as it is. Therefore, most have accepted it at its apparent meaning and reality and did not make it an example. As for the manner of extraction and addressing, Allah knows best about that.]! And the meaning of this is that He set forth for them the evidence of His Lordship and Oneness, and their minds and insights, which He created in them, bore witness to it, distinguishing between misguidance and guidance. It is as if He made them bear witness against themselves and affirmed them, saying to them: "Am I not your Lord?" And as if they said: "Yes, You are our Lord; we bear witness against ourselves and affirm Your Oneness." The concept of representation is broad in the words of Allah, the Exalted, and His Messenger, blessings and peace be upon him, and in the words of the Arabs.

An example of this is His saying, "Indeed, Our saying to a thing when We intend it is only that We say to it, 'Be,' and it is." He said to her and to the earth, "Come willingly or unwillingly," they said, "We have come willingly." And His saying:

When the ancients said to the belly, "The truth." [The explanation of this evidence is in the first part, page 181; refer to it there if you wish, the corrector.]

The wind of the morning said to him, "Qarqar." [The wind of the morning said to him, "Qarqar..." and the known mixed with the unknown for Abu al-Najm al-Ajli. "Qarqar" is a name of a verb meaning "Qarqar": a command to the clouds to bring it down as if it were rational, meaning: a sound of thunder.]

This is the saying of Sibawayh. Al-Mubarrad said, following al-Mazani: It is an imitation of the sound of thunder. It is based on the principle of avoiding the collision of two consonants, but in the first case, it can bear a pronoun, thus it is compound. In the second case, there is no pronoun in it, so it is singular. However, it is noted that the imitation of sounds does not convey urging or warning. Here, it conveys urging due to the context, and it has an action. It is said: The hen clucked when it made a sound, except that it may be said that the meaning is: O thunder, cluck. Their saying, 'The hen clucked,' is derived from clucking, just as they derived 'crying' from 'to cry' with two kasras between them and a pause, imitating the sound of the players. The term 'mixed' may imply a command, which is more suitable to what preceded. It may also imply the past. The intended meaning of denial is the denied. There is no saying for the wind. It is only likened to it when it drives the clouds, as if it were someone from whom speech is valid, in a metaphorical manner, and the saying is imaginative. It is permissible to borrow the term 'saying' for the pouring of clouds, in a literal manner. It may also be from the realm of metonymy. In this manner, His saying regarding the she-camel of Salih: 'Then a reddish one came to her like the brother of the arrow in anger, and said: Be barren.' The prohibited is permitted by necessity. The thrown is attributed to the non-thrown, to indicate the connection to the likeness of the barren to the ambiguous. That is, the zephyr said to the clouds: Cluck with thunder. And the places that I used to water are mixed with those I could not reach with watering, meaning to equalize between all of them in it. It is possible that the known is rain and the denied is thunder, lightning, and storms, meaning do all of it as if it were in the past, thus it is an addition to 'said.' And it is not from the saying of the wind. Based on this, it is also permissible to raise the known, and the action may be intransitive. This verse is from the verses of the Book. It is known that there is no saying then, but it is a representation and depiction of the meaning: 'So that you do not say,' is an object for it, meaning we did that from the establishment of the evidences that testify to its validity in the minds, out of dislike for you to say on the Day of Resurrection: 'Indeed, we were heedless of this,' we were not alerted to it, or out of dislike for you to say: 'Indeed, our fathers associated partners before, and we were descendants after them, so we followed them,' because the establishment of the evidences for monotheism and what they were alerted to is established with them, so there is no excuse for them in turning away from it and turning to imitation and following their fathers. Just as there is no excuse for their fathers in polytheism - and the evidences of monotheism are established for them - if you say: 'The children of Adam and their descendants, who are they?' Ahmad said: 'And it is more apparent that it includes all the children of Adam, thus it includes the Jews in its generality, because each one of the children of Adam is valid for both matters, that he is a son of Adam and that he is his descendant, and the only one excluded from this is Adam, peace be upon him, for he is not mentioned due to his prominence, and the speech does not lack the type called in the art of rhetoric by abbreviation and conciseness.' I said: 'By the children of Adam, he meant the ancestors of the Jews who associated partners with Allah, when they said: 'Uzair is the son of Allah.' And by their descendants: those who were in the time of the Messenger of Allah, blessings and peace be upon him, from their offspring who followed their fathers. The evidence that it is about the polytheists and their children is His saying: 'Or you say: 'Indeed, our fathers associated partners before.' And the evidence that it is about the Jews is the verses that are connected to it, which are in its style and manner, and that is His saying: 'And ask them about the city, when a group of them said: 'Why do you admonish?' And when your Lord declared, and when We lifted the mountain above them, and recite to them the news of the one to whom We gave Our signs. 'Will You destroy us for what the wrongdoers have done?' meaning they were the cause of our polytheism, for they established polytheism and advanced in it, and leaving it as a tradition for us. And likewise, such eloquent detail, We detail the verses for them, and perhaps they will return. And the intention is that they return from their polytheism, we detail it. And it was read: 'their descendants,' in the singular. And they say: with the yā.