Thus, ascribing the matter to the hand would merely be an ascription of the deed to the hand, just as He says,

“for what your two hands have put forward” ⦗22:10⦘,

and

“for what your own hands have sent ahead” ⦗3:182; 8:51⦘,

and likewise His words,

“from what Our hands have fashioned—cattle” ⦗36:71⦘.

However, when the verb is first attached to the doer, and then the hand is mentioned by means of the preposition bi (with/by), as in His statement,

“for what I created with My two hands” ⦗38:75⦘,

this is an explicit text affirming that He performed the act with His two hands.

For that reason it is impermissible, when a person merely speaks or walks, to say, “You did this with your two hands,” or, “This your two hands did,” because the bare statement “I did” already attributes the deed to the agent; if the intent were not that the deed was literally done by the hands, the additional wording would be pure redundancy, serving no purpose.

Indeed, you will not find—whether among Arabs or non-Arabs, Allah willing—an eloquent speaker who says, “I did this with my hand,” or, “So-and-so did this with his hands,” except when the deed was actually carried out by the hands. It is inconceivable that he would have no hands at all, or that he has hands while the deed occurred without them.

Through this decisive distinction the loci of metaphor and literalness become clear, and it becomes evident that these verses permit no metaphor whatsoever from the standpoint of the language itself.

He said to me, “Yet they have used the dual in place of the singular in His words,

‘Cast, both of you, into Hell…’ ⦗50:24⦘,

although the address is to a single being.”

I replied, “That is untenable. Some have said the verb is duplicated: ‘cast, cast.’ Others maintain that the address is to the driver and the witness. And those who assert that the address is to one angel say that a human being is accompanied by two angels, one on his right and one on his left; he cries out, ‘My two companions! my two companions!’ Thus he employs this dual form even if they are not actually present, as though addressing two beings. According to this view, therefore, the phrase ‘Cast, both of you’ is directed to two whose presence is only assumed, and so it offers no proof at all.”

I then said to him, “The second point is this: grant that the word ‘hand’ may, in principle, bear its literal sense, or denote power or favor, or serve as a circumlocution for mere action—yet what obliges us to turn it away from its literal meaning? If you say, ‘Because a hand is a limb, and that is impossible for Allah, exalted be He,’ I answer: this and the like merely establish that He cannot be described as possessing a hand of the same kind as created hands—which is undeniable. But why should it not be possible for Him to have a hand befitting His essence, possessing the perfections appropriate to that essence?”

He said, “Neither reason nor revelation rules this out.”

So I said, “If that is possible, and it is the plain sense of the word, why should we divert it to a figurative meaning? And every—”