Tafsir of Ar-Rum 30:13

(From among those whom they associated with Allah, Exalted is He, in worship). Therefore, they were attributed to them. It is said: The attribution is due to them associating them with Allah, the Exalted, in their wealth. By them, idols are meant. Muqatil said: They are the angels, peace be upon them. It is also said: They are the devils. Another view is: They are their leaders.

(Intercessors) who would protect them from the punishment of Allah, the Exalted, as they used to claim. The imperfect tense is brought negated by lam, which shifts it to the past tense, to indicate certainty. The plural form is used because it appears in contrast to the plural, meaning: not a single one of them had an intercessor at all.

Kharijah from Nafi’, Ibn Sinan from Abu Ja’far, and al-Antaki from Shaybah read it as wa lam takun with a ta’ al-fuqiyyah (feminine prefix).

(And they were, regarding their partners) — meaning regarding their divinity and their partnership, as indicated by avoiding the use of "they were of them" — (disbelievers). This is when they despaired of them and grasped the true nature of their affairs. (And they were) is used to indicate continuity, not merely to maintain the endings of the verses, as some have mistakenly supposed.

It is said: It denotes the past, as is apparent. The ba in (bi-shuraka’ihim) is causal, meaning: and they were, in this world, disbelievers in Allah, the Exalted, because of them. Some eminent scholars did not approve of this, as there is no significant benefit in reporting this, and because the intuitive meaning is that "the Day the Hour occurs" is the temporal context for their despair and what is conjoined to it. Hence, it was said: The appropriate interpretation is to treat the waw as indicating a state (hal), so that the meaning becomes that they did not intercede for them, even though they were the cause of their disbelief in the world. This is better than making it conjoined to the entire sentence inclusive of the temporal context, although, based on that, one should pause for caution. Unless it is said that it was omitted in reliance upon the rational evidence, though this is contrary to what is apparent.

"Shufa’a" (intercessors) is written in the Mus-haf with a waw followed by an alif, which is contrary to orthographic rules; the rule would be to omit the waw or place it after the alif, though the first is better as mentioned in the conventions of the script. Likewise, the rule was violated in writing "al-su’a" (evil), as it was written with an alif before the ya’, whereas the rule, as in al-Kashf, is deletion, because the glottal stop (hamzah) is written in the manner in which it is softened.