Likewise, there is the other well-known hadith: “The angels said, ‘O Lord, You have created the children of Adam; they eat, drink, marry, and ride mounts, so assign the life of this world to them and the Hereafter to us.’ Allah, Exalted is He, replied, ‘I will not treat the righteous offspring of the one whom I created with My two hands and into whom I breathed of My spirit like the one to whom I merely said, “Be!” and he came to be.’” (1)

This special distinction is understood solely from His words, “I created him with My two hands” (Sad 38:74). Had it been like His statement, “out of what Our hands have fashioned” (Ya-Sin 36:71), he would have stood on the same level as the cattle. Thus, when the Muslims grasped that His saying, “What prevented you from prostrating to what I created with My two hands” (Sad 38:74) necessarily(2) confers upon him a unique honor and superiority—by virtue of his having been created(3) by the two hands—over the one who was commanded to prostrate to him, the people at the Gathering likewise understood this, to the extent(4) that they counted it among his exclusive merits,