In this hadith, ‘Abdullah ibn Mas‘ud (may Allah be pleased with him) narrates that he was walking with the Prophet (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) in a remote part of Madinah, which was a sparsely populated area, and the Prophet (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) was leaning on a stick made of palm leaves. He passed by a group of Jews, some of whom wanted to ask the Prophet (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) about the soul, thinking that by doing so, they would be asking him something that he could not answer, and thus they would stir up doubts about him. Some of them supported the idea, but others thought that they should not ask him this question, for fear that he might say something about it that they would dislike. Then they decided to go ahead and ask him. The kunyah of the Prophet (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) was Abul Qasim so they called out to him by this kunyah and asked him about the soul. The Prophet (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) remained silent, and the revelation came down to him, and he recited the verse: {And they ask you, [O Muhammad], about the soul. Say, “The soul is of the affair of my Lord. And mankind have not been given of knowledge except a little”} [al-Isra’ 17:85]. In other words, knowledge of the soul is a divine matter that Allah (may He be glorified and exalted) has kept to Himself, to the exclusion of all others, and the knowledge that you have is only a small part of knowledge, because no matter how great human knowledge may grow, it is still limited, and human reason is also limited; the secrets of this universe are too great to be comprehended by finite human reason. In this hadith, we see that the soul is a matter of the unseen, and one of the secrets of divine knowledge. It also indicates how very small human knowledge is, and that human reason cannot comprehend everything..