Tafsir of Al-Fajr 89:16

"And as for when He tests him..."

His saying—Exalted and Majestic is He—“And as for when He tests him” means: He treats him with the treatment of one who tries and examines him through need and poverty to see whether he will be patient or not. “So He restricts his provision for him,” and he says, “My Lord has humiliated me.”

The phrasing “And as for him”—meaning the human being—“when He tests him” and so on, is used to ensure the precision of the detail and to complete the balance; the rest of the discourse regarding this is as it was in the preceding passage. It is apparent that both sentences contain a denial of the human being’s utterance contained therein, and a denial of his saying when his provision is straitened: “My Lord has humiliated me,” due to the indication of his short-sightedness and poor judgment; for he assumed that the restriction of provision is a humiliation, even though it may lead to the honor of both abodes.

Because it is not a humiliation in its essence, the Glorified did not say in the explanation of the trial, “And so He humiliated him,” upon restricting his provision, in the way He, the Glorified, said previously, “So He honored him and favored him.”

[It also contains] a denial of his saying when He honors him, “My Lord has honored me,” in relation to the Almighty’s previous saying, “So He honored him,” from the perspective that his claim—that Allah Almighty’s honoring of him is contrary to what Allah Almighty has established—is an attempt to suggest that Allah gave him what He gave him as an honor he deserved and merited, following their usual practice of boasting and claiming the majesty of their own worth. The gist is that what is being denied is that it occurs due to merit of status or lineage; in the detailed explanation, there is that which indicates that the very act of “honoring” is denied, not merely that it is [claimed to be] deserved.

The denial of the very act of “humiliation” is supported by this, and its aspect is what the Almighty established regarding “honoring.” For Allah—Exalted and Majestic is He—established the “honoring” by the giving of wealth and abundance, and [the human being] considered it an absolute honor that establishes proximity to Him, Exalted is He; so [Allah] denied that it is any part of that “honoring.”

It is also possible that the denial is of the “humiliation” only—meaning that when He bestows bounty upon him and honors him with it, he acknowledges the favor and honor of Allah Almighty, but when He does not bestow bounty upon him, he calls the withholding of that bounty a humiliation, when it is not. It has been said that this is supported by the mention of “honoring” in the Almighty’s saying, “So He honored him,” and in the verse, along with what follows it, which bears a whiff of the style of the Almighty’s saying: “Indeed, mankind was created anxious: when evil touches him, he is impatient, and when good touches him, he is stingy.” It is not hidden that the first interpretation is the intended one.

Ibn Kathir read akramani (my Lord honored me) and ahanani (my Lord humiliated me) with the affirmation of the ya in both. Nafi’ read it with the affirmation of the ya in continuation (wasl) and its omission in pause (waqf), while Abu ‘Amr allowed both options. The remaining seven [reciters] omitted it in both words in both continuation and pause; those who omitted it in pause made the nun quiescent.

Abu Ja’far, ‘Isa, Khalid, al-Hasan (with a different report from him), and Ibn ‘Amir read faqaddara (He restricted) with a doubled dal (tashdid) for intensification.