This verse highlights the concrete, physical nature of the revelation given to Moses, identifying the "Tablets" as a comprehensive, divinely authored explanation for all things. For the polemicist, this is the "Granularity Argument"—a detailed, written law is far more difficult to "corrupt" than an oral tradition.
Surah 7:145:
And We wrote for him on the tablets of all things - instruction and explanation for all things, 'Take them with determination and enjoin upon your people to take the best of them. I will show you the home of the defiantly disobedient.'
In Islamic theology, the Quran is the speech of Allah, but Surah 7:145 identifies the Torah (on the Tablets) as the writing of Allah.
If Allah personally wrote the instruction on the tablets, He would not allow His own handwritten decree to be subverted by rabbis or scribes later on. By calling it His own writing, Allah is putting His personal seal on the textual integrity of the Mosaic Law.
The focus is on the claim that the Tablets were an "explanation for all things."
When a book is "detailed" (tafṣīl), it acts as its own internal witness. If you try to change one part of a detailed legal code, it will likely contradict another part.
If the Torah given to Moses was a "detailed explanation of all things," then the Jews possessed a massive, interlocking system of truth. If that system matches the Torah we have today (which it does, as seen in the Dead Sea Scrolls), then the Quran is confirming a book that contains the very sacrificial system and covenantal promises that Islam later tries to redefine.
The verse ends with a warning: "I will show you the home of the defiantly disobedient."
Who are the disobedient? According to the context, they are those who refuse to "take with determination" what God wrote on the Tablets.
If a Christian or Jew follows the "detailed explanation" found on those Tablets today, they are doing exactly what this verse commands. If a Muslim tells them to stop following those specific Mosaic laws because they are "corrupted," the Muslim is essentially telling them to become the "defiantly disobedient" ones.
Surah 7:145 presents the Torah not as a vague set of suggestions, but as a physical, detailed, and divinely written "explanation for all things."
This verse is a shield against the claim that the early message of Moses was "lost" or "vague." If it was a "detailed explanation" written by God, it remains the standard by which all subsequent "revelations" must be judged. If the Quran contradicts the "detailed explanation" of the Tablets, it is the Quran—not the Tablets—that is at odds with God's writing.
How does the Quran's description of the "Tablets" here as a "detailed explanation" compare with its claim in Surah 12:111 that the Quran itself is also a "detailed explanation of all things"?