Tafsir of Al-Baqarah 2:77

His saying, "Do they not know," makes it far-fetched [for the preceding verses to be addressed to the believers], for it is an attribution of ignorance to them by the Exalted One regarding what He narrated about them. Thus, inserting the address to the believers in the midst of it would be like separating the bark from the tree. Furthermore, specifying the address to the believers involves unnecessary difficulty, and generalizing it to include the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—is a lack of decorum, as is not hidden.

The interrogation here is for the purpose of denial combined with reproach, because the People of the Scripture knew of the all-encompassing nature of His knowledge—Exalted is He. The intention is to demonstrate the heinousness of their action, in that they do what was mentioned despite their knowledge that Allah knows what they conceal and what they declare. There is an indication in this that one who commits a sin while knowing it to be a sin bears a greater burden.

The waw (and) is for conjunction with an implied [sentence] that the mind is led toward, and the pronoun refers to those being reproached. That is: Do they persist in the mentioned narration for fear of argumentation, and do they not know what has been mentioned? It is said the pronoun refers to the hypocrites only, or to them and those being reproached, or to their ancestors who distorted [the scripture].

The apparent meaning is to interpret "what they conceal and what they declare" in both places generally. This includes the disbelief they concealed and the belief they declared; some exegetes limited it to these two. Others said it refers to enmity and friendship, or the description of the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—that was in the revealed Torah, versus the description they invented as a lie against Allah.

He—Glory be to Him—placed the "concealed" before the "declared." This is either because the rank of the secret precedes the rank of the manifest, since nothing is declared except that its inception was previously hidden in the heart, and His knowledge—Exalted is He—attaches to its first state before it attaches to its second. Or, it is to signal their exposure and the occurrence of what they fear from the very beginning. Or, it is for the sake of hyperbole in explaining the comprehensiveness of His knowledge that encompasses all things—as if His knowledge of what they conceal is "earlier" than His knowledge of what they declare, even though in reality they are equal. For His knowledge—Exalted is He—is not by way of the acquisition of a [mental] form, but rather the existence of every thing itself is knowledge in relation to Him. In this sense, the state does not differ between things that are manifest and things that are hidden.

The matter is reversed in His saying: "Whether you reveal what is in your souls or conceal it, Allah will bring you to account for it," because the basis of what reckoning attaches to is manifest matters rather than hidden ones.

Ibn Muhaysin read [the verb] with a ta ("Do you not know"), so it is possible that this is an address to the believers, or an address to them [the hypocrites/People of the Scripture]. Then, the Exalted One turned away from addressing them and returned the pronoun to the third person to disregard them; this is a case of iltifat (shift in mode of address).