Tafsir of Yunus 10:16

{Say: "If Allah had so willed, I would not have recited it to you..."}

This means that its recitation is solely by the will of Allah and His bringing about a wondrous matter that transcends all customs.

It is that an unlettered man should emerge—who never learned, never listened, and never observed scholars for a single hour of his life, nor was he raised in a land containing scholars—and then recite to them a book of such eloquence that it dazzles every eloquent speech and surpasses all prose and poetry. It is laden with the sciences of fundamentals and derivatives, accounts of what has been and what will be, and speaks of the unseen which none knows but Allah.

He lived among you for forty years; you observed his conditions, and none of his secrets were hidden from you. You never heard a single letter of this from him, nor did anyone—even those closest and most intimate with him—ever know him to possess it.

{...nor would He have made it known to you.}

He would not have informed you of it through my tongue.

Al-Hasan recited: (wa-la adrātakum bihi), following the dialect of those who say a‘ṭātuhu and arḍātuhu in the sense of a‘ṭaytuhu and arḍaytuhu. This is supported by the recitation of Ibn ‘Abbas: (wa-la andhartukum bihi). Al-Farra’ narrated it as: (wa-la adra’tumukum bihi) with a hamza.

There are two interpretations for this:

1. That the alif is changed into a hamza, as in laba’tu (for labātu) in Hajj, ratha’tu the deceased, and hala’tu the flour. This is because the alif and the hamza are from the same source; do you not see that when an alif is touched by a vowel, it turns into a hamza?
2. That it is derived from dara’tuhu (I repelled him), so adra’tuhu means "I made you a repeller." The meaning would be: "I did not make you, by my reciting it, adversaries who repel me with argumentation and call me a liar."

Ibn Kathir recited: (wa-la-adrākum bihi) with the lam of inception to affirm the idrā’ (making known). Its meaning is: "If Allah had willed, I would not have recited it to you, and He would have made it known to you through the tongue of someone else. But He bestows His favor upon whom He wills among His servants, so He singled me out for this honor and saw me as worthy of it, to the exclusion of all other people."

{...for I have lived among you a lifetime before it.}

It is also recited as ‘umran (with a sukun).

This means: I have resided among you from youth to middle age, and you never knew me to engage in anything of its kind, nor were you capable of it, nor was I known for knowledge or eloquence such that you could accuse me of fabricating it.

{...then will you not use your reason?}

So that you may know it is only from Allah, not from someone like me. This is the answer to what they insinuated under their statement: "Bring a Quran other than this," by attributing fabrication to him.

{And who is more unjust than one who invents a lie about Allah or denies His verses? Indeed, the criminals will not succeed.}