2/250-252 — David and "the pushing back of one by another"
"When they came out against Jālūt (Goliath) and his army they said: 'Our Lord! Pour patience upon us, make our feet firm, and help us against the people who cover over.'"
أَفْرِغْ عَلَيْنَا صَبْرًا — ifrāgh: to empty out completely what is in a vessel. Patience is asked for not drop by drop but poured out. The concrete picture in the word carries the prayer.
وَقَتَلَ دَاوُۥدُ جَالُوتَ وَءَاتَىٰهُ ٱللَّهُ ٱلْمُلْكَ وَٱلْحِكْمَةَ — the story is given not with the details of the battle but with its outcome. And David (Dāwūd) is named here for the first time in this sūra: not as the foremost name of the army but as one from among the company left after the siftings.
The sentence is laid down as the ruling of the whole story, and what must be recorded is this: the balance is set up not by the dominance of a single power but by forces limiting one another.
I give this as my own reading, and its ground is the sentence itself: the verse does not say "God destroys the corrupters"; it says "He pushes back one part of people by another." The instrument, that is, is again the human being, and the order stands by mutual limitation.
The same sentence occurs once more at al-Ḥajj 22/40, in the context of the protection of places of worship.