The refrain "O Children of Adam" (sounded four times here) turns the Adam story into address. al-Ṭabarsī, al-Ṭūsī and al-Qummī all read the opening favour — a garment to cover nakedness and rīsh (finery) — against the historical backdrop the next verses supply: the polytheist Ḥums who circled the Kaʿba naked, "for we do not circle in the garments in which we sinned." Against that, "the garment of godwariness is better" gathers a spread of readings the commentators decline to choose among — righteous deed, faith, modesty, the armour of war, fear of God — while al-Qummī fixes it memorably as chastity: "the chaste one's nakedness does not show even when bare, and the dissolute one's shows even when clothed."
Verse 27 names the real antagonist: Satan, "who sees you whence you do not see him." al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī take up the old question of whether the jinn can be seen — al-Ṭūsī siding with al-Jubbāʾī that the verse's "you do not see them" is general, the Shaykhs (al-Mufīd, al-Ṭūsī) allowing that God may make them visible — and both note that the expulsion is ascribed to Satan "by his beguiling," not because he, rather than God, decreed it. The polytheists' excuse — "we found our fathers upon it, and God commanded us to it" (28) — draws the sharpest theological reply: al-Mīzān treats the verse as proof that God never commands the vile, and al-Ṭūsī reads it as a refutation of both blind imitation (taqlīd) and the determinism (jabr) of the Jāhiliyya. The Imāmī narrations in al-Burhān and al-Qummī drive it inward — the "vileness God is falsely said to command" is the claim of the unjust imams to be followed — and gloss "a party He guided, a party deserved misguidance" (30) against the Qadariyya, "the Magians of this community," insisting that will and power belong to God.
The passage's positive core is moderation without austerity. "Take your adornment at every mosque… eat and drink, but be not excessive" (31) yields, in al-Ṭabarsī, the maxim "God gathered all medicine in half a verse," and in al-Burhān an unusually rich body of reports: the Imams wearing fine khazz (Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn's fifty-dinar robes, sold in summer for charity), Ibn ʿAbbās dressing his best before the Khawārij, al-Ṣādiq answering Sufyān al-Thawrī by baring the coarse shirt beneath his fine robe, and the prophet Yūsuf in gold-buttoned brocade — "the people needed not his dress but his justice." Isrāf, the Imams explain, "is only what wastes wealth and harms the body," not owning thirty shirts. "Who forbade the adornment of God?" (32) thus becomes, for all the sources, a charter that things are by default permissible, the believers sharing the world's good things now and owning them purely hereafter. al-Mīzān and the four sources alike close the unit on its solemn counterweight — "My Lord forbade only the vile acts, outward and inward" (33), and "every nation has a term" (34) — before the universal offer of 35–36: messengers "from among you," security for whoever fears God and reforms, the Fire for those who deny the signs in arrogance.