as if you said: “That is a guidance, there is no doubt therein.” (1) He said: And if you make “there is no doubt therein” its predicate, you also raise “a guidance” to the nominative, by making it subordinate to the position of “there is no doubt therein”, as God, Majestic is His praise, said: {And this is a blessed Book We have sent down}, as if he said: “And this is a Book, a guidance, whose description is such and such.” He said: As for one of the two aspects of the accusative case, it is that you make “the Book” the predicate of “that”, and put “a guidance” in the accusative by way of severance, because “a guidance” is an indefinite word attached to a definite word whose predicate is already complete, so you put it in the accusative (2) because an indefinite word cannot serve as an indicator for a definite word. And if you wish, you put “a guidance” in the accusative by way of severance from the hāʾ in “therein”, as if you said: “There is no doubt therein as a guide.” (3)

Abū Jaʿfar [al-Ṭabarī] said: Thus he abandoned the principle that he had established regarding Alif Lām Mīm and its being in a subject-predicate relation with “that Book”, throwing it behind his back. What was necessary for him, based on the principle he established, was not to permit the nominative case in “a guidance” under any circumstances except from one angle, and that is by way of a fresh statement, since it was praise. But as for it being a predicate for “that”, or by way of subordination to the position of “there is no doubt therein”, what was necessary according to his principle was that it be an error. That is because if Alif Lām Mīm forms a subject-predicate relation with “that Book”, there is no doubt that it is impermissible for “a guidance” then to be a predicate for “that”—in the sense of completing a subject-predicate relationship with it—or subordinate to the position of “there is no doubt therein”, because its position then would be accusative, due to the completion of the predicate before it and its severance from it owing to its difference from it.

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The commentary on the interpretation of the statement of He Whose praise is Majestic: {for the God-fearing (2)}

261- Sufyān ibn Wakīʿ narrated to us, saying: My father narrated to us, from Sufyān, from a man, from al-Ḥasan, regarding His statement: “For the God-fearing,” he said: They fear that which was made unlawful to them, and they fulfill that which was made obligatory upon them.