Al-Furqan ('The Criterion'), 77 Meccan verses, answers the objections of the Meccans to the revelation and its human messenger. It closes with a portrait of the ibad ar-Rahman, the humble 'servants of the Most Merciful' who walk gently on the earth, spend in moderation and pass the night in prayer (25:63-77).
Al-Furqan's title, the Criterion, refers in its opening verse to the Quran itself as that which distinguishes truth from falsehood, and al-Tabari's commentary reads the surah's sustained answer to Meccan objections, that Muhammad eats food and walks in markets like other men, that the revelation was not sent down all at once, as addressing the same set of doubts about prophetic authority raised across several Meccan surahs but gathered here with particular concentration. The surah's closing portrait of the ibad ar-Rahman, walking gently, responding to ignorance with peace, spending neither wastefully nor miserly, and pleading through the night for forgiveness (25:63-77), is treated by commentators as one of the Quran's fullest single descriptions of ideal character, often paired in devotional literature with the opening list of believers' traits in Al-Muminun. Verse 25:70, promising that God transforms the evil deeds of the truly repentant into good ones, is read as among the Quran's most expansive statements on the scope of forgiveness available even to those with a serious past.