(Discourse concerning the clarification of the agreement of the meanings of the verses of the Qur'ān, and the meanings of the speech of him in whose tongue the Qur'ān was revealed, from the aspect of clarification—and the indication that this from God, exalted be His mention, is supreme wisdom—along with explaining the merit of the quality by which the Qur'ān was distinguished from all other speech)

Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, May Allah have mercy on him, He said:

Indeed, among the greatest of God's—exalted be His mention—blessings upon His servants, and His tremendous favor upon His creation, is what He granted them of the virtue of clarification, by which they express the innermost secrets of their hearts, and by which they indicate the resolves of their souls; thereby He made their tongues articulate (1) and eased for them what was difficult. Through it, Him alone they declare to be One, and Him alone through it they glorify and sanctify; to their needs through it they attain, and between themselves through it they converse, thus knowing one another and transacting.

Then He made them, majestic be His mention—in what He granted them of that—into tiers, and raised some of them above others in degrees: between a verbose orator, a sharp-tongued fluent speaker, one rendered mute (2) unable to clarify his own self, and one tongue-tied unable to express the innermost secret of his heart. And He made the highest of them in rank, and the loftiest of them in degree, the most eloquent of them in conveying what he intended to convey, and the clearest of them in expressing himself through it. Then He made known to them, in His Revelation and the Decisive verses of His Book, the merit of what He bestowed upon them of clarification over those whom