Commentary on Tafsir al-Jalalayn: “And you were not concealing yourselves” from committing your obscenities from “your hearing, nor your sight, nor your skins testifying against you”
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Then Allah the Exalted said: [Fussilat 41:22] to the end of it. This is the meaning of the author’s statement: “like what follows it”. And what follows it? There is no doubt that this is the speech of Allah, not the speech of the skins. And the author (may Allah have mercy on him) said: “and its position is close to what precedes it”, meaning the position of this speech is close to what precedes it, meaning it clarifies the connection, the connection of this phrase to what precedes it, which is that the One capable of creating you initially and returning you to life after death is capable of making your skins and your limbs speak. “[Fussilat 41:22] from committing your obscenities from [Fussilat 41:22]” means you were not hiding in your sins, your disbelief, and other things with which they hide, out of fear that your hearing, nor your sight, nor your skins would testify against you. It means that the disbelievers sometimes hide in their sins; they do not hide out of fear that their hearing, sight, and skins would testify against them, because there is no hiding from these things at all, since they are the person themselves and it is not possible to hide from them. Also, they do not believe that they will testify against them one day, so they do not hide from these things for two reasons: the first is that there is no separation from them, and its meaning is that they are their components; the second is that it never occurred to them one day that these would testify against them, because they deny the Resurrection, and denying the Resurrection necessitates that they do not believe that they will testify against them. [Fussilat 41:22] The meaning of concealing is hiding. And his saying: is on the assumption of an omitted phrase, the assumption being: out of fear that your hearing and your sight would testify against you, to the end of it. He says: “because you were not certain of the Resurrection”. This reasoning, we added to it another reasoning, which is the inseparability of their skins, hearing, and sight. When you were concealing yourselves [Fussilat 41:22] This is what they supposed about Allah, so they supposed about Allah the Exalted a bad supposition, and that if they hid from the creation, they hid from Allah. And for this reason he said: much of what you do, the second much is what they do openly and do not care about it.