like the similitude of a people who traveled on a dark night accompanied by rain, thunder, and lightning along a main road. Whenever lightning flashed, they saw the main road and proceeded along it, and when the lightning went away, they became bewildered. Likewise is the hypocrite: whenever he speaks the word of sincerity, it illuminates for him, but when he doubts, he becomes bewildered and falls into darkness. Thus is His statement: {"Whenever it flashes for them, they walk in it, and when it turns dark over them, they stand still"}. Then he said regarding their hearing and their sight by which they lived among people: {"And if God had willed, He would have taken away their hearing and their sight"}.

Abū Jaʿfar said:

461- Al-Qāsim narrated to us, he said: Al-Ḥusayn narrated to us, he said: Abū Tumayla narrated to us, from ʿUbayd ibn Sulaymān al-Bāhilī, from al-Ḍaḥḥāk ibn Muzāḥim, {"In it are darknesses"}, he said: As for the darknesses, they are misguidance, and the lightning is Faith.

462- Yūnus narrated to me, he said: Ibn Wahb informed us, he said: ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Zayd narrated to me regarding His statement: {"In it are darknesses, thunder, and lightning"}, and he recited until he reached: {"Indeed, God is over all things competent"}, he said: This is also a parable that God struck for the hypocrites; they had sought illumination through Islam just as this person sought illumination through the light of this lightning.

463- Al-Qāsim narrated to us, he said: Al-Ḥusayn narrated to us, he said: Ḥajjāj narrated to me, he said: Ibn Jurayj said: There is nothing on earth that the hypocrite hears except that he thinks it is intended against him and that it is death, out of hatred for it—and the hypocrite is the most averse of God's creation to death—just as when they are in the open field in the rain, they flee from the thunderbolts.

464- ʿAmr ibn ʿAlī narrated to us, he said: Abū Muʿāwiya narrated to us, he said: Ibn Jurayj narrated to us, from ʿAṭāʾ regarding His statement: {"Or like a rainstorm from the sky, in which are darknesses, thunder, and lightning"}, he said: A parable struck for the disbeliever.