When you were ascending not turning around for anyone and the Messenger was calling you from your rear so he rewarded you with grief for grief so that you might not grieve for what escaped you neither for what befell you; and God is aware of what you do. Then He sent down upon you after grief security-a slumber overcom- ing a party of you and a party whose own souls distressed them thinking wrongly of God thoughts of the age of ignorance saying “Have we any part whatever in the affairḍ” Say: “The affair belongs entirely to God.” They conceal within their hearts what they do not disclose to you saying “Had we had any part in the affair we would not have been slain here.” Say: “Even if you had been in your houses those for whom it had been appointed that they be slain would have sallied forth to the places where they were to lie” that God might try what was in your breasts and that He might prove what was in your hearts; and God knows what is in the breasts. The verse alludes to people for whom a period of slackening fatra occurs. The calls of the Real سبحانه come from within and without so that it is as if the rocks in the streets and the bricks in the walls were crying out to such a one “do not do it O servant of God!” But he is resolved upon his crooked way layy and settled in his error ghayy; [he] refuses to acknowledge what he knows would be more fitting and appropriate for his state. If he were to stay with his [original] aim and follow through with his aspiration by all means he would rein himself in and hold himself back from galloping ahead. [But] he gets nothing but gasping breaths anfās mutaṣāʿida and continuous sorrows ḥasarāt mutawātira-the Real سبحانه has bequeathed him one lonely estrangement after another. Eventually after he has been in this place of distress for a long time the Real سبحانه will relieve him with His beautiful kindness and draw him near with His gracious affection. He will deliver him from the narrowness of his captivity to the spaciousness of His pardon and favor. Many of these [people] will reach the place of the most respected and thereupon become still by God for God when they have been negated from station and honor and they will stand by God for God without waiting to be brought near and without looking to be welcomed.
