Tafsir of Al-A'raf 7:93

His saying, Glorified be He: "So he turned away from them and said, 'O my people, I have certainly conveyed to you the messages of my Lord and advised you.'"

The discussion regarding its counterpart has previously passed. However, this statement may bear the meaning of censure and rebuke toward them. And His saying, Glorified be He: "So how could I grieve over a disbelieving people?" is a negation of its content—meaning: I have fulfilled my duty to you in conveying, advising, and warning you against what has befallen you, yet you did not heed my words nor did you believe me.

"So how could I grieve" means: I shall not grieve over you, for you are not worthy of asā—which is grief, as stated in al-Siḥāḥ and al-Qāmūs, or intense grief, as stated in al-Kashshāf and Majmaʿ al-Bayān. It is also possible that it carries the meaning of regret for them due to the intensity of his sadness over them, and His saying, "So how..." etc., is a negation of that sentiment directed toward himself.

In this, there is tajrīd (abstraction) and iltifāt (shift in discourse), according to some: for he, peace be upon him, abstracted from himself a person and negated his grief over a people who do not deserve it, and shifted from address to the first person. Some researchers have stated that the apparent meaning is that it is not a case of iltifāt or tajrīd at all, for the utterance "he said" requires the first-person form, which contradicts tajrīd. Rather, it is a type of rhetoric called rujūʿ (recantation)—which is returning to a previous statement to contradict it. Because if he had said "I have conveyed to you" out of regret, it contradicts what follows it, so it is as if he reconsidered and recanted his initial regret, denying his former action. This occurs frequently in their speech; among such examples is the saying of Zuhayr: "Stop at the dwellings that have not been erased by time / Nay, they have been changed by the winds and the rains." The point of this is to signal distraction and bewilderment resulting from extreme confusion due to the magnitude of the affair, such that one does not distinguish between speech that is contradictory and speech that is not. Ibn Ḥijjah does not distinguish between this type and the type of negation and affirmation; it is as if the origin of that is his reliance in the latter type on the definition of Abū Hilāl al-ʿAskarī. If he had relied on the definition of the master of the craft, Ibn Abī al-Iṣbaʿ, the difference would not have been obscure to him.

Regarding both possibilities in His saying: "over a disbelieving people" etc., the explicit noun is used in place of the pronoun to signal their lack of worthiness of being grieved over due to their disbelief. Yaḥyā ibn Waththāb recited it as ay-sā (with a kasrah on the hamzah and the alif transformed into a yāʾ), according to the dialect of those who break the initial vowel of the imperfect verb, as in his (the poet's) saying: "Your companion, that you do not let me hear blame / Nor prick the wound of the heart, causing it to ache," along with the imālah of the second alif.

Furthermore, after the destruction of those to whom he was sent, Shuʿayb—peace be upon him—settled with those who believed in him in Mecca until they died there. Their graves, according to what is narrated from Wahb ibn Munabbih, are to the west of the Kaaba, between Dār al-Nadwah and Bāb Sahm. Ibn ʿAsākir narrated from Ibn ʿAbbās (may Allah be pleased with them both) that he said: "In the Sacred Mosque are two graves, and there are no others in it: the grave of Ismāʿīl and the grave of Shuʿayb, peace be upon them both. As for the grave of Ismāʿīl, it is in the Ḥijr, and as for the grave of Shuʿayb, it is opposite the Black Stone." It was also narrated from him that he (Shuʿayb)—peace be upon him—used to recite the scriptures that Allah the Exalted had revealed to Ibrāhīm—peace be upon him.

Among the strange accounts is what al-Shihāb relayed: that there were two Shuʿaybs, and that the father-in-law of Mūsā—peace be upon both—was from a tribe of the Arabs called ʿAnazah, and ʿAnazah ibn Asad ibn Rabīʿah ibn Nizār ibn Maʿadd ibn ʿAdnān. Between him and the one mentioned before there is a long expanse of time. So investigate this, and Allah the Exalted knows best.