Tafsir of Az-Zukhruf 43:17

"And when one of them is given tidings of that which he sets forth as a parable for the Most Merciful, his face remains darkened, and he is filled with suppressed grief."

(17) It is said: It is a circumstantial qualifier (hal), and the second scholar [Al-Alusi] approved it, in the sense that they attributed to Him, the Exalted, what they mentioned of their own state—that when one of them is given tidings of it, he becomes distressed. It is also said: It is an initiating sentence (isti’naf) confirming what preceded it. It has been suggested that it is conjoined to what preceded it, but that is not strong. The shift in address (iltifat) serves to indicate that the mention of their abominations requires turning away from them and narrating them to others by way of astonishment.

The nominal sentence is in the position of a circumstantial qualifier (hal). That is, when one of them is given tidings of what he has diminished—which he set as a parable for the Most Merciful, Glorified be His Majesty—namely, the female gender (for a child must be of the same genus and likeness as the parent), his face becomes extremely black due to the wretchedness of what was announced to him in his view. His state is that he is filled with distress and sorrow.

It is reported from some Arabs that when his wife gave birth to a female, he abandoned the house where the woman was. She said: “What is the matter with Abu Hamza that he does not come to us? He stays in the house next to ours, Angry that we do not bear boys, and that we have no say in our own affairs; We only take what we have been given.”

It is also recited as muswaddun in the nominative case, and muswaddon in the form of an intensive derivative from iswadda (to turn black), like ihmarra (to turn red), also in the nominative case. This is based on the [understanding] that in the verb zalla (remains/becomes) there is a pronoun [referring to] the one given the tidings, and "his face is blackened" or "is intensely black" is a nominal sentence functioning as the predicate. The meaning is: "The one given the tidings becomes one whose face is blackened."

It is also said: The hidden pronoun in zalla is the pronoun of [the state of] affairs (damir al-sha’n), and the sentence is its predicate. It is also said: The verb is complete (intransitive), the sentence is a circumstantial qualifier, and the interpretation is what has preceded.