Tafsir of Ad-Dukhan 44:28

{كذلك} The Kaf is in the accusative case, meaning: "Like that expulsion, We expelled them from it." Or, it is in the nominative case, as a command: "It is like that."

{وأورثناها قوما آخرين} They were not related to them in any way—neither by kinship, nor religion, nor alliance. They were the Children of Israel: they had been subjugated and enslaved by them, so Allah destroyed [the oppressors] at their hands and made them inherit their kingdom and their dwellings.

{فما بكت عليهم السماء والأرض} When a person of great importance died, the Arabs would say, in order to magnify the tragedy of his passing: "The heaven and the earth wept for him, the wind wept for him, and the sun darkened for him."

In the Hadith of the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ): "There is no believer who dies in a foreign land where he has no one to weep for him, but that the heaven and the earth weep for him."

Jarir said: The stars of the night and the moon weep for you.

The Kharijite woman said: O tree of Al-Khabur, why are you still green? As if you did not grieve for Ibn Tarif.

This is by way of metaphor and imagery, an exaggeration to express the necessity of grief and weeping for him. Likewise, what is narrated from Ibn Abbas (may Allah be pleased with them both) regarding the weeping of the believer’s place of prayer, the traces he left on earth, the places where his deeds ascended, and the places where his provision descended from heaven—all of this is metaphor.

The negation of this for [Pharaoh and his people] in the Almighty’s saying: {So the heaven and the earth did not weep for them} contains mockery of them and their state, which is the opposite of the state of one whose loss is considered great—of whom it is said: "The heaven and the earth wept for him."

Al-Hasan said: "The angels and the believers did not weep for them; rather, they were pleased by their destruction." He means: the inhabitants of the heaven and the inhabitants of the earth did not weep for them.

{وما كانوا منظرين} When the time of their destruction arrived, they were not granted a delay to another time, nor were they given respite until the Hereafter; rather, [their punishment] was hastened for them in this world.

{ولقد نجينا بني إسرائيل من العذاب المهين * من فرعون إنه كان عاليا من المسرفين}