Tafsir of Al-Anbiya' 21:41

This is a consolation to His Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, regarding their mockery, after having fulfilled the need of mentioning the wise responses to their stabs at Prophethood and what was integrated therein of meanings that are the core of the objectives. It contains that he, upon him be prayer and peace, has fulfilled what was upon him of the obligation of conveying, and that he is the one who will be victorious in the end. For this reason, it began with the mention of the most distinguished of the Prophets, peace be upon them, for the sake of following their example, and concluded with His saying, Exalted is He: "And We have already written in the Psalms..." etc.

The initiation of this with an oath is for the sake of increasing the verification of its content. The tanwin on "messengers" (rusulin) is for glorification and abundance. "From" (min) is connected to a deleted element which is an adjective for it; that is: "And by Allah, messengers of momentous status and many in number have been mocked, existing from a time before your time," with the omission of the genitive (the time) and the replacement of it by the genitive object (before you).

"Fahaqa" (encompassed)—that is, surrounded immediately after that, or descended, or alighted, or something similar, for its meaning revolves around encompassing and necessity, and it is hardly used except in the context of evil. "Al-hayq" is what encompasses a person of disliked actions. It is said: The origin of "haqa" is "haqqa," like "zala" and "zalla," or "dhama" and "dhamma."

His saying: "by those who mocked them"—meaning those messengers, peace be upon them—is connected to "haqa." Its advancement before its agent, which is His saying, "what they used to mock," is for the sake of hastening to state the arrival of evil upon them.

"Ma" (what) is either a relative pronoun, serving to convey magnitude, with the governed pronoun returning to it and the prepositional phrase connected to the verb after it; its advancement is for the sake of observing the endings of the verses. That is: "There encompassed them that which they used to mock," in that they were destroyed on account of it.

Or it is a masdariyyah (infinitive-forming particle), and the pronoun refers to the genus of the messenger, indicated by the plural, as they have said. Perhaps the preference for the singular over the plural is to alert that the recompense for their mockery of each one of them, peace be upon them, encompasses them—because the recompense for their mockery of all of them, from the aspect that it is what it is, is the same. That is: "There descended upon them the recompense for their mockery," placing the cause in the position of the effect, signaling the complete connection between them. Or it is the very act of their mockery, if what is intended by that is the punishment of the Hereafter, based on the manifestation of deeds in the afterlife realm in forms appropriate to them in beauty and ugliness.