Of everything We created a pair. In this verse there is an affirmation of the Lord's solitariness and unity. When God creates newly arrived things and engendered beings, He creates them as pairs, whether linked to each other or opposed to each other. For example: male and female, day and night, light and darkness, heaven and earth, land and sea, sun and moon, jinn and mankind, obedience and disobedience, felicity and wretchedness, guidance and misguidance, exaltation and abasement, power and incapacity, strength and weakness, knowledge and ignorance, life and death. He created the attributes of the creatures in this manner-paired with each other or opposed to each other-so that they would not resemble the attributes of the Creator. Thus His unity and solitariness would become manifest to them, for His exaltation has no abasement, His power no incapacity, His strength no weakness, His knowledge no ignorance, His life no death, His joy no sorrow, His subsistence no annihilation. The uniquely one God is one in Essence and attributes, unique in worthiness. He is incompa- rable with everyone and separate from everything. Nothing is as His likeness [42:11]. No one is like Him and nothing is similar to or resembles Him. Resemblance derives from partnership, and God has no associate or partner. He is without equal and without need. The door of His withholding is shut and the door of His munificence open. He forgives sins and caresses the faulty. He makes His love apparent by caressing servants. He loves His servants, though He has no needs. He brings about love between Himself and the servants without associa- tion or partnership. Thus the servants, no matter what their states-whether wounded by the ar- row of trial or drowned in gentleness and bestowal-should seize hold of His generosity and seek shelter in Him, fleeing to Him from the creatures. This is why He issues the command, “So flee to God!” [51:50].
