Therefore, be careful, lest you make the believers lose hope of Allah's mercy.

Therefore, be careful, lest you make the believers lose hope of Allah's mercy.' " (al-Kafi) Abu 'Amr az-Zubayri narrates from Abu 'Abdillah (a.s.) about the words of Allah, And most surely Tarn most forgiving to him who repents and believes and does good, then continues to follow the right direction [20:82], that he (a.s.) said: "This verse has an explanation, which explanation is proved [by the fact] that Allah does not accept any deed from any servant except from him who meets Him with fulfillment of that explanation, and with that condition which Allah has imposed on the believers.

" And he said: "Repentance with Allah is only for those who do evil in ignorance; Allah means that every sin which the servant does - although he may be aware of it - he is ignorant when he thinks in his heart to disobey his Lord; and Allah has spoken about it quoting the talk of Yusuf to his brothers: Do you know how you treated Yusuf and his brother when you were ignorant? [12:89].

So he charged them with ignorance because they planned in their hearts to commit sin against Allah." (at-Tafsir, al-'Ayyashi) The author says: The text of the narration is not free from confusion and disarray. Apparently the earlier portion is meant to show that good deed is accepted when the servant fulfills its condition and does not destroy it. After all, repentance is acceptable only when it restrains and prevents the repenter from sin - even for a limited time.

And probably the text, "And he said: Repentance with Allah is only for those ... ", is a new topic, to show that the word, in ignorance, in this verse is an explanatory clause, and that sin in general is ignorance - it has already been given as an alternative explanation in the commentary. This latter part is narrated also in Majma'u 'l-bayan from the same Imam (a.s.). Previous…