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

The interpretation of the statement of Allah, Exalted be His Remembrance: {and conceal the truth while you know (42)}

Abū Jaʿfar said: Regarding His statement, "and conceal the truth," there are two perspectives of interpretation:

One of them: That Allah, Exalted be His Praise, forbade them from concealing the truth, just as He forbade them from confounding the truth with falsehood. So the interpretation of that, in this case, would be: Do not confound the truth with falsehood, and do not conceal the truth. And His statement "and conceal" (wa-taktumū) would then be in the jussive mood (majzūm) by the same governor that placed "you confound" (talbisū) in the jussive, being conjugated in conjunction with it.

And the other perspective of them: That the prohibition from Allah, Exalted be His Praise, to them is against confounding the truth with falsehood, while His statement "and conceal the truth" is an informative statement from Him about their concealing the truth which they know. Thus His statement "and conceal" (wa-taktumū) would then be in the subjunctive mood (manṣūb) due to its diversion (inṣirāf) from the meaning of His statement "and do not confound the truth with falsehood", since His statement "and do not confound" is a prohibition, whereas His statement "and conceal the truth" is an informative statement conjugated in conjunction with it, making it impermissible for the jussive particle operating upon His statement "you confound" to operate upon it again. And that is the concept which grammarians call diversion (ṣarf). The counterpart of that in meaning and grammatical analysis is the statement of the poet: Do not forbid a character while practicing the like of it ... a great shame upon you if you do so

(1) Al-Farrāʾ mentioned this in his book Maʿānī al-Qurʾān 1: 33–34, then said: "If you say: And what is al-ṣarf? I say: That you bring the wāw as a conjunction to speech in whose beginning is an operative particle whose repetition is not correct upon that which is conjoined to it. So when it is like that, it is al-ṣarf, as the poet said: ..." And he recited the verse and said: "Do you not see that it is not permissible to repeat 'do not' (lā) in 'and you commit the like of it'? Therefore it was named ṣarf, since it was conjoined, and it was not correct for the preceding operative particle to be repeated in it."
(2) This is among the verses that were narrated in several poems, as stated by the author of al-Khizāna 3: 617. Sībawayh (1: 424) attributed it to al-Akhtal, while it is in a poem by al-Mutawakkil al-Laythī, and it was attributed to Sābiq al-Barbarī, al-Tirimmāḥ, and Abū al-Aswad al-Duʾalī in a poem cited by the author of al-Khizāna (3: 618), which is not in his Dīwān published by Professor Muḥammad Ḥasan Āl Yāsīn in Nafāʾis al-Makhṭūṭāt (printed by Maʿārif Press, Baghdad, 1373 AH / 1954 CE); this Dīwān is from a copy in the handwriting of Abū al-Fatḥ ʿUthmān Ibn Jinnī. The editor did not append it to the scattered poetry of Abū al-Aswad that he collected.

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