Cloaking the truth with falsehood
وَلَا تَلْبِسُوا۟ ٱلْحَقَّ بِٱلْبَٰطِلِ وَتَكْتُمُوا۟ ٱلْحَقَّ وَأَنتُمْ تَعْلَمُونَ
wa-lā talbisū l-ḥaqqa bi-l-bāṭili wa-taktumū l-ḥaqqa wa-antum taʿlamūn — And do not cloak the truth with falsehood, and do not conceal the truth while you know.
The same charge against cloaking and concealing the truth appears once as a prohibition (2:42) and once as an interrogative accusation (3:71), and the shift from imperative negation to 'why do you...' changes it from command to reproach.
The two verses share the core clause: the truth (al-ḥaqq) is 'cloaked' (talbisū / talbisūna) with al-bāṭil and 'concealed' (taktumū / taktumūna), while the addressees 'know' (wa-antum taʿlamūn). In (2:42) the clause stands as a prohibition: 'And do not cloak the truth with falsehood, and do not conceal the truth while you know.' It sits between a command to trust what was sent down (2:41) and commands to uphold the ṣalāh and give the zakāh (2:43), so the prohibition forms one item in a series of second-person plural imperatives. In (3:71) the same clause is recast as a question: 'O people of the Book, why do you overlay the truth with what is null and conceal the truth while you know?' The negative imperative lā talbisū becomes the interrogative lima talbisūna, and the verse opens with a direct address, yā ahl al-kitāb, absent from (2:42). The question form presupposes the action is already occurring, turning prohibition into accusation. The surrounding verses reinforce this: (3:70) asks the same addressees 'why do you cover up (reject) the signs of Allah while you yourselves are witnessing?', and (3:72) reports a group from the People of the Scripture advising acknowledgment of what was sent down by day and rejection of it at its end. So in the verses given, the shared wording functions once as instruction within a command sequence and once as reproach within a sequence describing conduct already underway.
Where it occurs
- 2:42 A prohibition against cloaking the truth with falsehood and concealing it, placed within a series of commands to the addressees.
- 3:71 An interrogative accusation asking the people of the Book why they perform the same cloaking and concealing.
All Qur'anic expressions