—that is to say, safeguarding them causes Him neither strain nor burden. By stating this, He demonstrates the perfection of His power: no hardship, however slight, and no exertion, however minimal, ever befalls Him in preserving His creatures. He, exalted is He, likewise says in another verse:

“Indeed, We created the heavens and the earth and all that is between them in six days, and no weariness touched Us.” [Qaf 38]

This verse likewise proclaims the completeness of His might and that weariness does not overtake Him even in momentous acts such as creating the heavens and the earth, whereas a created being is overcome by fatigue when engaged in a great task. The word lughūb means cessation and exhaustion; this subject is treated at length elsewhere.

The point here is that He is characterized by the attributes of perfection that belong to Him by His very essence, and it is impossible that He be qualified by their opposites. Whenever He is described through negations, the purpose is to affirm perfection.

Those theologians said, “We have attributed life to Him so as to deny death of Him,” just as they also said, “He is a thing in order to deny non-existence of Him.” Yet life itself is an attribute of perfection that He deserves by His essence, while death contradicts it. Thus He is not described as living merely to negate death; rather, affirming His life intrinsically entails the negation of death. One denies death of Him because He is living; one does not affirm life solely for the sake of denying death. Likewise, to affirm that He is an existing thing necessarily negates non-existence of Him—it is not that His existence is asserted only in order to repudiate non-existence. Indeed, the negation of non-existence from Him