Tafsir of As-Saffat 37:177

"So when it descends into their courtyard..."

Meaning: When the promised punishment descends into their courtyard—that is, the wide open space near houses, or any wide place in general. Its plural is suwah. A poet said: "It was all the same whether they grazed the cattle or did not; the courtyards became dusty." The pronoun contains a kinayah metaphor; the punishment is likened to an army that suddenly attacks a people while they are in their homes, settling upon them. The "descending" is an act of imagery (takhyeel).

Ibn Mas’ud read it as nazala (in the light form, passive voice). It is intransitive, so the prepositional phrase serves as the deputy agent (na'ib al-fa'il). It was also read as nuzzila (in the heavy form, passive voice), which is transitive, so the deputy agent is the pronoun referring to the punishment.

"...then evil is the morning of those who were warned."

Meaning: How evil is the morning of those who were warned! This is based on sa'a meaning "to be evil." Abdullah [Ibn Mas’ud] read it as bi'sa (an expression of condemnation). The noun being condemned is omitted. The definite article in "the warned" (al-mundharin) refers to the genus, not a specific group, due to the requirement of universality in what follows. Thus, it follows the pattern of condemnation and praise, providing explanation after ambiguity and detail after summation. If sa'a is taken to mean "to be ugly" in its root, then it is permissible to consider it as referring to a specific group without any omitted construction.

"Morning" (sabah) is used metaphorically for the time the punishment descends, whatever time that may be, taken from the "morning of an army" attacking an enemy—that is, one who marches to them by night to attack them in their state of heedlessness by morning. They often name a raid "a morning" (sabah) because, most generally, it occurs at that time. It is a synecdoche (majaz mursal), where the time of the event is mentioned while intending the event that occurred within it, similar to how the Arabs name their battles after the times they occurred.

It is permissible to interpret "morning" here in that sense. In Al-Kashshaf, it is likened to the punishment descending upon them—after they had been warned but denied it—to an army that warned a people of its attack, yet they paid no heed to the warning, nor did they prepare, nor did they devise a strategy to save themselves until it landed in their courtyard suddenly, launched a raid upon them, and uprooted them. The custom of their raiders was to attack in the morning, so the raid was called a "morning" even if it occurred at another time. This verse would not have reached its peak of eloquence, nor would it possess the splendor one feels, which captivates the soul and nature, if not for its construction in the form of a parable (tamthil).

The apparent meaning is that the speech is based on a representative metaphor (isti'ara tamthiliyya), and its superiority over others is too famous to mention and too exalted to deny.

It has been said that the pronoun in "descends" refers to the Prophet, peace be upon him. In this case, it would mean his arrival upon the conquest [of Mecca], not the Day of Badr—as he was not in their courtyard then, except by forced interpretation—nor [the arrival at] Khaybar, because of his saying, peace be upon him, when he reached it in the morning: "Allahu Akbar! Khaybar is ruined. Verily, when we descend into the courtyard of a people, evil is the morning of those who were warned." His recitation of it there was to use it as evidence. However, the address here is to the polytheists, and the implausibility of the pronoun referring back to him, peace be upon him, is not hidden.