(22–23) “Satan will say, when the matter has been decided, ‘Indeed, Allah promised you the true promise. I too made you promises, but I failed you. I had no authority over you except that I called you and you responded to me. So do not blame me; blame yourselves. I cannot rescue you, nor can you rescue me. I disavow your former association of me with Allah. Surely the wrongdoers will have a painful punishment.’ And those who believed and performed righteous deeds will be admitted into gardens beneath which rivers flow, abiding therein forever by their Lord’s permission. Their greeting therein will be, ‘Peace.’”
That is, “Satan”—who is the cause of every evil that occurs or has ever occurred in the world—will address the people of the Fire and disavow them “when the matter has been decided” and the people of Paradise have entered Paradise and the people of the Fire have entered the Fire. “Indeed, Allah promised you the true promise” through His messengers, but you did not obey Him. Had you obeyed Him, ⦗425⦘ you would have attained the supreme triumph. “I too promised you” good, “but I failed you”—that is, what I made you hope for through false aspirations did not and never will come to pass.
“I had no authority over you”—that is, I had no proof supporting what I said—“except that I called you and you responded to me.” In other words, the full extent of what I did was to call you to what I wanted and make it seem attractive to you, whereupon you responded to me by following your desires and appetites. Since this is the reality, “do not blame me; blame yourselves.” You yourselves are the cause, and responsibility for what warrants punishment rests with you. “I cannot rescue you”—that is, I cannot deliver you from the distress you are suffering—“nor can you rescue me.” Each will have his share of the punishment.
“I disavow your former association of me with Allah”—that is, I repudiate your having made me a partner with Allah. I am not Allah’s partner, nor was obedience to me obligatory. “Surely the wrongdoers”—who wronged themselves by obeying Satan—“will have a painful punishment,” in which they will abide forever.
It is part of Allah’s kindness toward His servants that He warned them against obeying Satan and informed them of the avenues through which he gains access to human beings, his designs upon them, and his aim of leading them into the Fire. Here Allah explains to us that when Satan and his party (1) enter the Fire, he will utterly disavow them and repudiate their association of partners with Allah. “None can inform you like the All-Aware.”
Know that Allah states in this verse that Satan has no authority, while in another verse He says, “His authority is only over those who take him as an ally and who, through him, associate partners with Allah.” The authority negated here is the authority of argument and proof, for Satan has no proof whatsoever for that to which he calls. The furthest he can go is to present them with specious arguments and attractive embellishments that embolden them to commit sins.
As for the authority affirmed for him, it is his power to entice his allies into sin, relentlessly inciting them toward disobedience. They are the ones who gave him authority over themselves by taking him as an ally and joining his party. Consequently, he has no authority over those who believe and place their trust in their Lord.
After mentioning the punishment of the wrongdoers, Allah mentions the reward of the obedient, saying: “And those who believed and performed righteous deeds will be admitted”—that is, those who upheld the religion in word, deed, and belief—“into gardens beneath which rivers flow.” Therein are pleasures and delights that no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and that have never occurred to any human heart. They will be “abiding therein forever by their Lord’s permission”—not through any power or might of their own, but through Allah’s power and might. “Their greeting therein will be, ‘Peace’”—that is, they will greet one another with peace, salutations, and wholesome words.