116وَإِذ قُلنا لِلمَلائِكَةِ اسجُدوا لِآدَمَ فَسَجَدوا إِلّا إِبليسَ أَبىٰMuhammad AsadFor [thus it was:] when We told the angels, "Prostrate yourselves before Adam!" - they all prostrated themselves, save Iblis, who refused [to do it];1See 2:30-34 and the corresponding notes, especially 23, 25 and 26, as well as note 31 on 15:41. Since - as I have shown in those notes - the faculty of conceptual thinking is man's outstanding endowment, his "forgetting" God's commandment - resulting from a lack of all "firmness of purpose" in the domain of ethics - is an evidence of the moral weakness characteristic of the human race (cf. 4:28 - "man has been created weak"): and this, in its turn, explains man's dependence on unceasing divine guidance, as pointed out in verse 113 above.