in terms of knowledge was proposed by a number of scholars because they assumed that the nearness mentioned in the verse referred to His nearness alone. They therefore interpreted it as knowledge. When they saw that this applied universally, they said that He is near to every existing thing in the sense of knowledge. This, however, is unnecessary, as explained above. His words,

“And We are nearer to him than his jugular vein” (16) [Qāf 16],

cannot be understood as referring merely to knowledge, for someone who knows more about a thing than another does is not said to be nearer to it than