{ فَجَعَلَهُمْ كَعَصْفٍ مَّأْكُولٍ }

Like the leaves of a crop that has been struck by al-akal, which is when worms eat it, or when its grain is eaten and it remains empty of it. The statement here involves the omission of a genitive (the mudaf) and replacing it with the genitive case (al-mudaf ilayhi), or it is a metaphorical attribution. The comparison to this is because their souls departed while their bodies remained, or because the stone, with its heat, burned their interiors.

Many have maintained that the meaning is "like straw that beasts have eaten and excreted." The intended meaning is "like dung," but it was not mentioned with that specific term due to its coarseness, thus it arrived in accordance with Qur’anic etiquette. He likened the severing of their limbs to the scattering of the parts of dung; therein is a manifestation of the degradation of their state.

It is also said that the meaning is "like straw that beasts eat and excrete," and the intent is to place them in the status of straw that beasts are not kept away from—meaning they are despised and lost, with no one paying them any mind, gathering them, or burying them, like straw in the desert upon which beasts do whatever they wish due to it having no guardian. However, "eaten" (ma'kul) was put in place of "beasts eat it" (akalathu al-dawab) to represent the past in the form of the present. This is as you see.

It seems that since their arrival was to destroy the Ka'bah, it was fitting that they be destroyed by stones; and since what incited their anger was the excrement of the Kinani [man], He—the Glorified and Exalted—likened them, in what He did to them according to the latter view, to dung. Or, since what incited [the event] was its burning—due to the fire the wind carried from the Arabs, as you have heard—He—the Mighty and Majestic—likened them, in what He did to them—the Glorified is His state—to straw whose grain has been eaten, as we pointed out at the end.

Abu al-Darda’ recited—as narrated by Ibn Khalawayh—ma’kul with a fatha on the hamza following the vowel of the mim, and this is anomalous (shadh). This is like how they followed [the vowel] in their saying mahmum with a fatha on the ha due to the vowel of the mim. And Allah the Exalted knows best.