Tafsir at-Tabari: Jami' al-Bayan - Dar al-Tarbiyah wa al-Turath Edition

They shot with an arrow, and no one was aware of it ... then they returned and said: "How wonderful is the morning light!" (1)

He means by His saying: "no one was aware of it," no one knew or was aware of it. Thus God, May His remembrance be exalted, informed concerning the hypocrites that they do not perceive that God deceives them, by His granting them respite and drawing them on step by step, which from God, Exalted be His praise, is a conveyance to them of proof and excuse, and from them to themselves a deception, and a harm to them in the Hereafter. As in what—:

321- Yūnus ibn ʿAbd al-Aʿlā narrated to me, he said: Ibn Wahb informed us, he said: I asked Ibn Zayd about His statement: {And they deceive not except themselves, and they perceive it not}, he said: They do not perceive that they have harmed themselves by what they concealed of disbelief and hypocrisy. And he recited the statement of God, May His remembrance be exalted: {On the Day when God resurrects them all}, he said: They are the hypocrites, until he reached: {and they think that they are upon something} [Surah al-Mujādilah: 18], faith used to benefit them in your view (2).

The discourse regarding the interpretation of the statement of He whose praise is Exalted: ﴿In their hearts is a disease﴾

Abū Jaʿfar said: The root of disease is illness; then it is used regarding bodies and religions. Thus God, Exalted be His praise, informed that in the hearts of the hypocrites there is a disease. And Blessed and Exalted be He only meant by His report

(1) The poetry is by al-Mutanakhkhil al-Hudhali, Dīwān al-Hudhaliyyīn 2:31, Amālī al-Qālī 1:248, and Simṭ al-La'ālī 563. "ʿAqqā bi-s-sahm" (he shot the arrow upward): threw it into the sky intending nothing by it; its origin lies in blood revenge and blood money (diyah), in that they used to gather before the guardians of the slain person with full blood money, asking them to accept the blood money. If they were strong, they refused that; otherwise, they took an arrow and shot it into the sky. If it returned splattered with blood, they claimed that their Lord forbade them from taking blood money. If it returned as it ascended, they claimed that their Lord commanded them to forgive and take blood money. Islam invalidated all of that. "Fā'a" and "istafā'a": returned. "Al-Waḍaḥ": milk. He satirizes them for humiliation and meanness: they squandered the blood of their slain, shot the arrow that they claimed commanded and forbade them, turned back from seeking blood revenge to accepting blood money, preferred the camels of blood money and their milk over the blood of their companion's killer, and said to themselves: Milk is more beloved to us than retaliation and more beneficial.
(2) Tradition 321 - It is the completion of the tradition that preceded: 320.

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