Tafsir of Al-Qamar 54:20

{تَنْزِعُ النَّاسَ}: It is permissible for this to be an adjective describing the wind, or a circumstantial qualifier (ḥāl) thereof, as it has been described, thereby approaching definiteness. It is also permissible for it to be an independent clause (musta’naf). The noun "the people" (al-nās) is used instead of a pronoun referring back to them; it is said: [to encompass] both their males and their females.

Al-naz'u means to uproot. It is narrated that they entered ravines and pits and held onto one another, so the wind uprooted them and cast them down dead.

{كَأَنَّهُمْ أَعْجَازُ نَخْلٍ مُّنقَعِرٍ}

Meaning: uprooted from their planting sites, fallen upon the earth. It is said: they were likened to the trunks of palm trees, which are their bases without their branches, because the wind would pluck off their heads, leaving them as bodies and corpses without heads. This simile is rendered even more appropriate by the fact that they were possessors of large, tall bodies. "Palm" (nakhl) is a collective noun that is treated as masculine, looking at the wording—as is the case here—and is treated as feminine, looking at the meaning—as in His saying, Exalted is He: {أَعْجَازُ نَخْلٍ خَاوِيَةٍ} (hollow palm trunks). The consideration of each [gender] in both instances is for the sake of the rhyming ending (fāṣilah).

The simile clause is a circumstantial qualifier (ḥāl) for "the people," and it is an anticipatory circumstantial qualifier (ḥāl muqaddarah). Al-Tabari said: There is an omission in the speech, and the estimation is "so it left them as if they were..." etc. Thus, the kāf (the particle of comparison), according to what is in al-Baḥr, is in the accusative position due to the omitted verb, though that is not [the strongest view]. Abu Nahik read it as a’juz (أعجز), on the pattern of af’ul, similar to ḍab’ and aḍbu’.