Tafsir of An-Nisa' 4:120

(He promises them) things he can hardly fulfill. It is also said: [he promises them] victory and safety. It is also said: [he promises them] poverty and need if they spend [in charity]. Al-A‘mash recited it as ya‘dhum with a quiescent dal, which is a reduction due to the frequency of vowels.

(And he fills them with false hopes)—empty aspirations. It is also said: [he fills them with hopes of] long life in this world and the permanence of pleasure therein. It is permitted that the meaning in both sentences is that he performs the act of promising and performs the act of instilling hope, in the manner of saying: "So-and-so gives and forbids." The accusative plural pronoun in "promises them" and "fills them with hopes" refers back to "those" (man) based on its meaning, just as the singular nominative pronoun in "takes" and "has lost" refers back to it based on its wording.

The Almighty informed [us] of the occurrence of the promise and the instilling of hope—along with the occurrence of other things which the accursed one also swore to—because they are among the internal matters and the strongest causes of misguidance and the snares of deception.

(And the Devil promises them nothing but delusion)

(And it is the illusion of benefit in that which contains harm). In my view, this promise and command [occurs] either through corrupt notions or through the tongues of his allies. The possibility that he takes the form of a human and does what he does is remote.

"Delusion" (ghururan) is either a second object for "promises," or a verbal noun indicating purpose (maf‘ul li-ajlihi), or an adjective for a deleted verbal noun, meaning: "a promise possessing delusion," or "a deceiving promise," or a verbal noun not derived from the verb, because "he promises them" is equivalent in force to "he deceives them with his promise," as Al-Sameen said. The sentence is an interpolation, and the lack of reference to "filling with hopes" is because it falls under the category of "promising." In Al-Bahr, it is stated that they are near in meaning, so he sufficed with the first of them.