Tafsir of Ya seen 36:28

"And We did not send down..."

The Meaning: God sufficed the matter of their destruction with the cry of an angel. He did not send down an army from the armies of heaven to destroy them, as He did on the day of Badr and the Trench.

If you ask: What is the meaning of His saying, "And We were not to send down"? I say: It means it was not appropriate in Our wisdom to send down an army from heaven to destroy the people of the Beloved (Habib al-Najjar). God has ordained the destruction of every people through specific means rather than others, based on what wisdom requires and interest necessitates. Do you not see His saying: "So among them were those upon whom We sent a storm of stones, and among them were those who were seized by the blast, and among them were those whom We caused the earth to swallow, and among them were those whom We drowned" (Al-Ankabut: 40)?

If you ask: Why then did He send down armies from heaven on the day of Badr and the Trench? God says: "So We sent upon them a wind and armies you did not see" (Al-Ahzab: 9), "with a thousand of the angels, rank upon rank" (Al-Anfal: 9), "with three thousand angels sent down" (Al-Imran: 124), "with five thousand angels, having marks" (Al-Imran: 125)? I say: A single angel would have sufficed. The cities of the people of Lot were destroyed by a feather from the wing of Gabriel, and the lands of Thamud and the people of Salih by a single cry from him. However, God favored Muhammad (peace be upon him) in everything over the great prophets and the messengers of determination. He bestowed upon the Beloved (Habib al-Najjar) and his children causes of honor and exaltation that He did not bestow upon anyone else. Among these is that He sent down armies from heaven for him. It is as if He indicated by His saying, "And We did not send down" and "And We were not to send down," that sending armies is among the momentous affairs for which only one like you is qualified, and We would not do it for others.

"It was not but one cry": The seizure or the punishment was nothing but one cry. Abu Ja'far al-Madani read it in the nominative case (raf') based on kana being complete (intransitive), meaning: "Nothing occurred except one cry." The standard analogy and usage favor the masculine verb because the meaning is "nothing occurred," but he looked at the literal wording, treating "the cry" as the agent of the verb. Similar to this is the reading of Al-Hasan: "So they became, you see nothing but their dwellings," and the verse of Dhu al-Rummah: "And nothing remained but the protruding ribs."

Ibn Mas'ud read: "One zaqiyah (cry)," from the bird zaqa (to cry out). Hence the proverb: "Heavier than the zawaqi (crying birds)."

"Extinguished": They became extinguished just as fire is extinguished, turning into ashes, as Labid said: "Man is but like a shooting star and its light, Turning to ashes after it was brilliant."

"O regret for the servants! There does not come to them any messenger except that they used to mock him."