al-Aʿrāf 7:52-53

Wa laqad jiʾnāhum bi-kitābin faṣṣalnāhu ʿalā ʿilmin hudan wa raḥmatan li-qawmin yuʾminūn · Hal yanẓurūna illā taʾwīlah, yawma yaʾtī taʾwīluhū yaqūlu'lladhīna nasūhu min qablu qad jāʾat rusulu rabbinā bi'l-ḥaqq, fa-hal lanā min shufaʿāʾa fa-yashfaʿū lanā aw nuraddu fa-naʿmala ghayra'lladhī kunnā naʿmal, qad khasirū anfusahum wa ḍalla ʿanhum mā kānū yaftarūn

"We brought them a Book which We set out in detail upon knowledge — a guidance and a mercy for a people who believe. · Are they waiting for anything but its outcome? On the day its outcome comes, those who forgot it before will say: 'The messengers of our Lord did come with the truth. Have we now any intercessors to intercede for us? Or could we be sent back, that we might do other than what we used to do?' They have lost themselves, and what they used to invent has gone astray from them."

The root ف-ص-ل: to separate two things from one another; to set a division. Faṣl — separating. Form II (faṣṣala) states multiplicity: to separate piece by piece, to set out in detail.

And the phrase is a pattern repeated in al-Aʿrāf. It is a countable datum:

Three of the four occurrences are for this Book, one for the tablets given to Moses. That is, the sūra ascribes the same verb to two Books. I record this as an observation.

عَلَىٰ عِلْمٍ — "upon a knowledge". The particle ʿalā: the ground on which the work of setting out in detail rests is stated. And this is the same word as fa-la-naquṣṣanna ʿalayhim bi-ʿilmin in the sixth and seventh verses. The sūra ties both the recounting and the setting out in detail to the same word.

The root أ-و-ل: the place to which a thing returns, the end it reaches. Āla ilayh — it returned to it, it came to it. Taʾwīl is the place where a word or an event comes out in the end — that is, the announcement in its realised form.

This differs from the sense "interpretation" that the word acquired later, and here the verse itself says which it means: yawma yaʾtī taʾwīluh — the taʾwīl "comes". What comes is not an interpretation but an event.

I give this as a note about the word, and its ground is the verb itself.

There are two requests in the sentence, and both are joined by aw (or):

And the order of the two requests is worth recording: first the intermediary, then their own hand. I record this as my own reading and it is not binding; its ground is the order: what comes to mind first is not putting right what one did oneself, but someone's stepping in between.

And nuraddu is passive: "if we were sent back". They do not speak of returning by their own power.

This second request is recorded elsewhere in the Qurʾān as well, and each time it goes unanswered (al-Anʿām 6/27-28; al-Muʾminūn 23/99-100 — treated in al-Muʾminūn). I rely on those treatments.