Tafsir of At-Tawbah 9:70

"Has there not reached them the news..."

(Meaning: the hypocrites) "of those before them?" (Meaning: their news which is of significance. The interrogative is for affirmation and warning.) "The people of Noah" (who were drowned by the flood), "and ‘Ad" (who were destroyed by the wind), "and Thamud" (who were destroyed by the earthquake). The stylistic pattern was varied for the latter two groups because they were not as famous for their prophet; and it is said: because many of them believed. "And the people of Abraham" (whose leader, Nimrod, was destroyed by a gnat, and they were exterminated after him, though not by a heavenly cause like the others). "And the companions of Madyan" (meaning its inhabitants, the people of Shu’ayb, peace be upon him; they were destroyed by fire on the Day of the Shadow, or by the blast and the earthquake, or by fire and the earthquake, according to the varying accounts). "And the Overturned Cities" (plural of mu’tafika, derived from al-i’tifak, which is overturning by placing the top of a thing at the bottom through sinking). The intended meaning is either the villages of the people of Lot, peace be upon him—in which case the overturning is literal, as they were overturned with them, their high parts becoming their low, and stones of baked clay were rained down upon those within—or the villages of the deniers and rebels in general—in which case the overturning is metaphorical for the inversion of their state from good to evil, by way of loanword metaphor (isti’ara), like the saying of Ibn al-Rumi: And the "sinking" is not that you find the low-born of a city [becoming] its high-born; Rather, it is that the base ones should rule. [This is because] not all of them suffered a literal overturning.

"Their messengers came to them with clear proofs." (This is a resumption to clarify their news, and the plural pronoun refers to everyone, not just the Overturned Cities.) "So Allah was not to wrong them" (meaning: so they denied them, and Allah, the Exalted, destroyed them; so "was not," etc. The fa [so] is for conjunction to a suppressed clause that the discourse covers and the order requires, meaning: It was never His habit, Glory be to Him, to perform what resembles wronging people, such as punishing without a crime. It may also be construed as the continuity of negation, meaning: such a thing never proceeds from Him, Glory be to Him, at all; it is rather more emphatic, as is not hidden). Al-Zamakhshari’s statement—"meaning it was not fitting for Him to wrong them, as He is Wise, and that which is ugly is not permissible for Him"—is built upon the Mu'tazilite doctrine.

"But they were wronging their own selves" In that they exposed them to the requirements of their aptitude for punishment through disbelief and denial. The combination of the past and present tense forms is to indicate continuity. The placing of the object before the verb, according to what some of the virtuous scholars have decided, is merely for emphasis, while observing the rhyme, without intending to restrict the wronging to them [exclusively], according to the opinion of those who do not view the fronting as necessitating restriction, such as Ibn al-Athir, in one of the views.