Tafsir of Al Imran 3:142

"Or do you think..."

"Or" (Am): It is munqaṭiʿah (disjunctive), and the meaning of the interrogative particle (hamzah) within it is one of denial (inkār).

"And Allah has not yet known..." It carries the meaning of "and you have not yet struggled (tujāhidū)," because knowledge is linked to the known object. Thus, the negation of knowledge is treated as the negation of the object of that knowledge, because the latter is negated by the negation of the former.

A man might say, "Allah has not known any good in so-and-so," meaning: "There is no good in him for Allah to know."

"Not yet" (lammā) carries the same meaning as "did not" (lam), except that it contains an element of expectation. Thus, it indicates the negation of struggle in the past, while implying its expectation in the future. You say, "He promised me he would do such-and-such, and lammā (not yet)," meaning he has not done it, but I expect him to.

It was recited as wa-lammā yaʿlamanna Allāhu (with a fatḥah on the mīm). It is said that this refers to the light nūn (the emphatic nūn), which was then elided.

"And He knows the patient ones." It is in the accusative case (naṣb) due to an implied an (that). The wāw (and) here signifies conjunction (jamʿ), similar to your saying: "Do not eat fish and drink milk" (i.e., do not combine the two).

Al-Ḥasan recited it with a jazm (jussive) as a conjunction to the preceding verb. ʿAbd al-Wārith narrated from Abū ʿAmr that it is in the nominative case (rafʿ), with the wāw signifying a state (ḥāl). It is as if it were said: "And you have not yet struggled while you are patient."

"And you had certainly wished for death before you met it; so you have seen it while you were looking on." (143)