The first: That the meaning of 'the Manifest' (al-Zahir) in the verse does not correspond with what they interpreted it as. Since the meaning in His, the Almighty's, saying 'and the Hidden' (al-Batin) is that He, Glorified be He, is an unapproachable unseen (ghayb mani') who became hidden by His essence from His creation, so their seeing Him and perceiving Him was not possible for them (and thus was their interpretation concerning it also). And upon this comes the meaning of the word 'the Manifest': meaning that He manifested by His essence to the creation in a visible form; it does not mean that He manifested to them by His traces, even if we say that the artifact indicates the being of the maker and the trace indicates the existence of the effector (al-mu'aththir). Meaning, just as He became hidden by His essence from His creation, He manifested by His essence to His creation; He became hidden from them by the light of the abstracted divinity (al-lahut al-mujarrad) and He manifested to them in a form like their forms, because the vision of the Originator upon what He is, is impossible for them.