if you are truthfulḍ': it is related that for the prophets of the Children of Israel the miraculous proof [of their prophethood] was that they would bring forth an offering and invoke God whereupon a fire would come down from the heaven and consume it. The interpretation of this is that they would bring forth their souls seeking nearness to God by them and they would invoke God through renunciation and devotion whereafter the fire of love would come down from the heaven of the spirit and consume this [offering of theirs] and annihilate it in the Oneness, whereupon their prophethood would be [proven as] authentic and would become manifest. The common folk of the Children of Israel came to hear of this and came to believe in its outward form, even if this should be possible in the world of [God's] power. They thus required from every prophet that sign. They also falsely believed that 'to lend to God' - which means to consecrate wealth in the way of God by expending in order to receive the full reward, and to consecrate [one's] acts and attributes by effacing them through the wayfaring and replace them with the attributes of the Truth and His acts and to actualise the station of the substitutes (abdāl) - meant that the Truth was poor and that they were rich. Or, it means that they contested contemptuously the prophets in both instances after they had understood.
