2/109 — Pardon in the face of envy
"Many of the People of the Book, out of the envy within them, would like to turn you back into unbelief after your faith, even after the truth has become clear to them. So pardon and overlook until God brings His command."
That the two sentences stand side by side is striking. The first sentence gives an extremely hard diagnosis: envy, and moreover "after the truth has become clear" — knowingly once again.
In the second sentence what one would expect is a counter-move. What comes is: فَٱعْفُوا۟ وَٱصْفَحُوا۟ — "pardon and overlook".
عفو — root ʿ-f-w: to erase, to wipe out the trace of something. It is used of the wind's erasing tracks on sand. Pardon, then, is not "I accept it but I do not forget"; it is to erase the trace.
صفح — root ṣ-f-ḥ: a page, a surface. The verb means "to turn the page", or "to turn one's face". That is, to close the matter over and move on.
The distance between the hardness of the diagnosis and the mildness of the command balances the general tone of the section: to see what the other side is doing and to know how to behave towards it are two different works. Seeing does not require retaliating.