Despite the popularity of the Light Verse in Islamic thought and piety, commentators were reluctant to take the first four words of the verse, “God is light of the heavens and the earth,” literally, offering instead interpretations of light as guidance or God as the cause of light. Fakhr al-Din Razi in his “al-Tafsir al-Kabir” points out that Ghazali in his “Mishkat al-Anwar” breaks with earlier commentators in interpreting this verse literally, a position that requires him to claim that God is the only true light and that the other claimants to the title of light—physical light, the light of the eyes, and the light of intelligence—cannot be said to be light in the full sense. Razi examines this position, adding to Ghazali’s arguments on such matters as the limitations of physical vision, and concedes the validity of his position. The philosopher Suhrawardi, on the other hand, begins with the assumption that God is light and builds a systematic metaphysics on this assumption. While he does not mention Ghazali, his Hikmat al-Ishraq is either by intention or circumstance a response to Ghazali’s much less philosophical interpretation of the Light Verse. His book is thus a sort of anti-Tahafut, in which Ghazali’s position is shown to be inadequate. The paper demonstrates the theological complexities inherent in attempts to interpret this seemingly simple verse, with even the earliest commentators realizing that it could not be interpreted literally and the later, more philosophical commentators be willing to make radical metaphysical speculations in order to preserve the literal meaning of the verse. Later philosophical and mystical commentators and the interpretation of the remainder of the verse are beyond the scope of this paper.