What is the literal and the figurative?

The Shaykh : In the Qur'an, if you are... what they call figurative is actually the literal. And you know that those who classify speech as partly literal and partly figurative have established certain conditions that are beneficial—please, please, here—certain conditions they established are beneficial to the Salafi call; for they state that one does not resort to the figurative unless the literal is impossible, or unless there is a context—whether a transmitted or rational context—that compels the Muslim to move from the literal to the figurative. And in what they interpret regarding the verses of attributes and the hadiths of attributes, there is nothing, even by their own terminology, that compels the scholars to interpret the literal meanings of the verses and hadiths concerning attributes into what they call the figurative. However, Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah (may Allah have mercy on him) cites some examples that linguists call figurative, and he says: "This is a naming based on convention, and there is no dispute over conventions, but the definition of the literal and the figurative that they established does not apply to many of the texts about which they say they are figurative."
-- We... the place.

The questioner: I mean, the issue, O Shaykh...

The Shaykh: But I am like a wall. A nail said to it: "Why did you split me?" It said: "Ask the one who drives me!"

The questioner: ... on the head...

The Shaykh: It forces me to sit here, whether for a reason or for the sake of obligation--
Those who call some phrases figurative, Ibn Taymiyyah says are literal; because the meaning that comes to mind first when the speech is heard by the listener is this literal meaning. So he mentions, for example, in the case of His saying—Exalted is He—: ; they say: this is figurative by omission, this is a convention, but no one among the Arabs—nor among the non-Arabs who have become Arabized—comes to mind that Allah (Mighty and Majestic) means: meaning its walls, its ground, its mountains, its valleys, and so on. Rather, what comes to mind is the meaning they called figurative. So it is a matter of convention, but when this convention leads to negating the literal, which they acknowledge as a rule that one may not depart from except with a context, and the context is...; then at that point it becomes a negation of the Qur'an in reality by a transient convention. So their saying, for example: , , they say it is an implied omitted addition; meaning: the mercy of your Lord, or the majesty of your Lord, or the like. Well, what is the necessity that compelled them to such an interpretation? Nothing at all. So here there are two issues: the first issue is that the literal and the figurative is a convention, and then they applied it to what the convention applies to in the mind, by their own testimony that it is not permissible to depart from the literal except for a necessity or a context that prevents us from understanding the phrase on its apparent meaning. And from here, the statement of Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn al-Qayyim (may Allah have mercy on him) and those who followed their path is that there is no figurative; meaning: by the later convention. As for, for example, His saying—Exalted is He—: , it is like the village, and it is not said here that this is figurative, but rather it is the literal; because no other meaning is understood from this phrase. And so, compare as they say.
Yes.