Tafsir of As-Saffat 37:94

{يزفون}: They hasten, from the zafif (swift gait) of the ostrich.

• Yaziffun: From azafa, meaning to enter into the zafif.
• Or from azafahu: Meaning to urge someone into the zafif, i.e., they urge one another.
• Yuzaffun: In the passive voice, meaning they are urged into the zafif.
• Yaziffun: From wazafa-yaziffu, meaning to hasten.
• Yaziffun: From zafahu, meaning to drive or urge on, as if they are driving one another toward him due to their haste.

Question: Is there a contradiction between this and the Almighty’s saying: “They said, ‘Who has done this to our gods? Indeed, he is of the wrongdoers.’ They said, ‘We heard a youth who mentions them, called Abraham’” (Al-Anbiya: 59-60)?

Here, it is mentioned that they turned away from him fearing contagion, but when they saw him breaking them, they rushed toward him to stop him and punish him. There, it is mentioned that they asked about the breaker until they were told, “We heard Abraham criticizing them, so perhaps he is the breaker.” One implies they witnessed him breaking them, while the other implies they inferred from his criticism that he was the breaker.

Answer: There are two possibilities:

1. Those who saw him and rushed toward him were a small group, not the masses or the leaders. When the masses and the elite returned from their festival to the house of idols to eat the food they had placed there for blessing, they saw them broken and were appalled. They asked, “Who did this?” The aforementioned group did not report him explicitly, but rather through allusion and insinuation by saying, “We heard a youth who mentions them,” due to certain deterrents.
2. He broke them and left without anyone noticing. Their rushing toward him occurred only after they returned from their festival and asked about the breaker, leading to their statement: “They said, ‘Then bring him before the eyes of the people.’”