“That is part of the wisdom your Lord has revealed to you. And do not set up another god alongside Allah, lest you be cast into Hell, blameworthy and banished.” (39)

Regarding His saying, “All of that—the evil of it—is hateful in the sight of your Lord”: Ibn ‘Amir and the scholars of Kufa recited it with the hamzah in the nominative case and the ha’ vowelled with dammah, as a genitive construction. Its meaning is: all that We have mentioned, beginning with His saying, “And your Lord has decreed that you worship none but Him,” “the evil of it” is hateful in the sight of your Lord—that is, the evil of what We have enumerated for you—because He has mentioned commendable matters as well, such as His saying, “Give the relative his due,” and, “Lower to them the wing of humility,” and other such commands.

The others recited “evil” in the accusative case with tanwin, meaning: all that We have mentioned, from His saying, “Do not kill your children,” up to this ⦗209/b⦘ point, is evil, containing nothing good, since all of it refers specifically to what has been prohibited, rather than to anything else. He did not say “hateful” in the feminine form because the word order involves inversion; its underlying sense is: all of that is hateful and evil. [His saying, “hateful,” is repeated rather than functioning as an adjective; that is, all of that is evil, and it is hateful.] (1) Or it accords with the meaning rather than the wording, since an evil deed is a sin, and “sin” is masculine.

“That” is what We have mentioned, “part of the wisdom your Lord has revealed to you.” Everything Allah commands or prohibits is wisdom.

“And do not set up another god alongside Allah.” In these verses, Allah addressed the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, while what is intended is his ummah. “Lest you be cast into Hell, blameworthy and banished”—that is, driven away and excluded from every good.