Fifth: When a word is indeed employed for a certain meaning, yet only in a different syntactic setting from that found in the revealed text, some interpreters nonetheless force that meaning onto the divine wording—though the wording will not accommodate it—simply because the term can bear that sense elsewhere. This is one of the most abhorrent forms of error and deception (1). A typical example is the claim that the “two hands” in the verse, “What prevented you from prostrating to that which I created with My two hands” (Sad 38:75), mean “blessing.” Admittedly, the Arabs say, “So-and-so has a hand with me,” and ‘Urwah ibn Mas‘ud once told the Siddiq, “Had it not been for a hand you have with me, which I have not yet repaid, I would have answered you” (2). Yet in this verse the word “hand” appears in a construction where the Almighty attributes the action to Himself, causes the verb to govern the word with the preposition bi—as in, “I wrote with the pen”—expresses the noun in the dual (3), and makes it a unique distinction with which He honored His chosen servant Adam above the rest of humankind, just as He distinguished the Messiah by breathing into him of His spirit and distinguished Moses by speaking to him directly without an intermediary. All of this precludes interpreting “hand” here as “favor,” even though in another construction the term can legitimately carry that sense. That a word is suitable for a given meaning in one syntactic context does not oblige it to bear that meaning in every context.

The same applies to His words, “Faces on that Day will be radiant, looking toward their Lord” (Qiyamah 75:22–23). In this passage it is impossible to construe “looking” as “awaiting reward,” for He attributed the act of looking to the very faces—the natural locus of sight—linked the verb with the preposition ilā, and whenever nazara (to look) is connected with ilā it denotes nothing but the seeing of the eye. Moreover, He described the faces as radiant, a glow that comes only with the actual presence of that which brings delight, not with the distress of awaiting it. Given this construction, therefore, it is impossible to understand “looking” as anything other than beholding, even