Tafsir of Sad 38:12-15

Its origin is from the stability of a tent secured with stakes. It is said: A house cannot be built without pillars, And there is no pillar if the stakes are not driven in.

It was metaphorically applied to the stability of power, sovereignty, and the uprightness of affairs, as Al-Aswad said: In the shadow of a king with firm stakes.

It is also said: He would stretch the person being tortured between four pillars, with an iron stake driven into each, and leave him until he died. Others say: He would stretch him between four stakes in the ground and release scorpions and snakes upon him. Others say: He had stakes and ropes with which he played before him.

By this demonstrative pronoun, He intends to inform that the "factions" are the very same defeated army mentioned previously, and that they are the ones from whom the denial originated. He first mentioned their denial in a declarative sentence in a general, ambiguous way, then followed it with an exclusionary sentence to clarify it: that every one of the factions denied all the messengers, for if they denied one of them, they have denied them all.

In repeating the denial and clarifying it after its ambiguity, and in varying the repetition—first with a declarative sentence and then with an exclusionary one—there are types of hyperbole that record against them the entitlement to the most severe or most complete punishment.

Meaning: It became necessary, because of that, for Me to punish them with their deserved punishment.

Refers to the people of Mecca. It is also permissible that it refers to all the factions, bringing them to mind by mention, or because they are as if present before Allah.

The single blast.

It is also read with a damma (fawāq): It has no pause equal to a fawāq. A fawāq is the time between two milkings of a milker or two sucklings of a suckler. It means: when its time comes, it will not be delayed by this amount of time, as in His saying: “When their term comes, they cannot delay it an hour” (An-Nahl: 61).

Ibn Abbas said: It has no return or increase. It is derived from afāqa (to recover), as when a sick person returns to health. The fawāq of a she-camel is the time it takes for the milk to return to its udder. He means: it is a single blast, and only that; it is not repeated or echoed.