O Children of Adam, Four Times

From verse 26 there is a feature peculiar to Sūrat al-Aʿrāf. From verse 26 — some readers may have noticed the expression in reading it — there are four of them: yā banī Ādam, yā banī Ādam. There are four, very close together, and they do not appear to occur anywhere else; so far as can be told, they occur nowhere else. Four of them stand together in one place. For there is a long discussion, of some ten verses, concerning Ādam (peace be upon him) — the beginning, the deception, the coming down to the earth — and now Allah says: go down to the earth, and you shall be enemies one to another; Shayṭān and man shall be enemies. And yā banī Ādam: O children of Adam — so He addresses us, O children of Adam.

What is of note is that of these — yā banī Ādam, which means O children of Adam, four times: verse 26, then verse 27, then again verse 31, and finally verse 35, yā banī Ādam — three have to do with clothing, with covering, with the covering of nakedness. Allāhu akbar. It is not usually considered at this depth, but taken together it makes much sense. It is a particular khuṣūṣiyyah of this chapter to have it.

The first is this: O children of Adam, We have revealed to you, We have sent down libās, clothing, to cover your nakedness — though the best of your clothing is your taqwā. Hence there are among us some niqābīs, and some well-covered men, whose disposition is not altogether chaste. But that is no reason for people not to cover well. Show us, they say: we have seen niqābīs or ḥijābīs, and they are not good in this or that respect. Why not set the better example — be good in this and that, and wear the niqāb, or keep a beard? They say: those men come to Jumuʿah and then they cheat. Why not come to Jumuʿah and not cheat, and give a better example? People hold some strange shayṭānī notions about these things at times. Shayṭān misleads some one way and some another. So much for libās.