37إِن يَسأَلكُموها فَيُحفِكُم تَبخَلوا وَيُخرِج أَضغانَكُمMuhammad Asad[for,] if He were to demand of you all of them, and urge you,1 you would niggardly cling [to them], and so He would [but] bring out your moral failings.2Sc., "to divest yourselves of all your possessions".For my rendering of adghan as "moral failings", see note 37. In the present context, this term has more or less the same meaning as the term fujur in 91 8. The implication is that since man has been created weak" (4:28), the imposition of too great a burden on the believers would be self-defeating inasmuch as it might result not in an increase of faith but, rather, in its diminution. This passage illustrates the supreme realism of the Qur'an, which takes into account human nature as it is, with all its God-willed complexity and its inner contradictions, and does not, therefore, postulate a priori an impossible ideal as a norm of human behaviour, (Cf. 91:8, which speaks of man's personality as "imbued with moral failings as well as consciousness of God" - a phrase which is explained in the corresponding note 6.)