Tafsir of Al-A'raf 7:139

"Indeed, these" — meaning the people who are devoted to these idols — "are destroyed," meaning ruined and perished, as Ibn Abbas said. "What they are in" — of religion, meaning Allah Almighty will destroy the religion they are upon at my hands, and He will ruin their idols and make them into fragments. "And invalid" — meaning vanishing completely, which is more emphatic than interpreting it as being contrary to the truth. "What they were doing," meaning that which they persisted in doing, namely worshipping them, even if they intended thereby to draw near to Allah Almighty; the intent is that this does not benefit them at all. Interpreting "what they were doing" as referring to the idols themselves because they were made for them is highly contrary to the apparent meaning. The sentence is an explanation for establishing the confirmed ignorance of the people.

In placing the demonstrative pronoun as the subject of "inna," as stated in al-Kashshaf, and fronting the predicate of the nominal sentence that serves as the predicate for it, there is a branding of the idolaters that they are indeed the ones exposed to destruction, that it never misses them, and that it is an inescapable fate for them, in order to warn them of the consequence of what they requested and to make them detest what they loved. The reasoning for this, as per al-Kashf, is that the demonstrative pronoun, after providing presence and complete distinction, indicates that they are worthy of what is predicated about them by means of the aforementioned devotion. The fronting signifies that the state of "what they are in" is nothing but destruction, and the state of "their work" is nothing but invalidity; they do not transcend these two states, so they are an inescapable fate for them.

Abu al-Baqa’ permitted that "what they are in" could be the active agent (fa'il) of "destroyed" (mutabbar), as it relies upon the subject; it is equal in status to the possibility of "what they are in" being a subject (mubtada') and "destroyed" being its predicate, or perhaps even more likely, although the context—as stated by al-Qutb and others—demands the former. So understand this.