Saba

لِّيُعَذِّبَ اللَّهُ الْمُنَافِقِينَ وَالْمُنَافِقَاتِ (with the result that Allah will punish the hypocrites, men and women, and the Mushriks, men and women, and will accept the repentance of the believing men and women. Surely Allah is Most-Forgiving, Very-Merciful. [ 73]) The letter 'lam' used in the beginning of this verse is not for mentioning the cause or aim, as generally understood in common usage, but it is the lam of 'aqibah in the terminology of Arabic linguistics. It points out to the end of something, as it appears in a line of Arabic poetry which reads:

لِدُوا لِلمَوتِ وَ ابنُوا لِلخَرَابِ

'Be born only to be dead and build only to be ruined'.

It does not mean that the aim of one's birth was to be dead or that the aim of constructing of a building was that it could be ruined, but it simply means that the end of everyone born is death and the end of every building is falling into ruins.

The sense of the verse is that, as a result of man's assumption of responsibility for the trust, mankind will split in two groups: (1) Disbelievers, hypocrites and others who will rebel against Divine orders and become wasters of the great 'trust'. They will be punished. (2) There will be believing men and believing women who, through their obedience to Divine injunctions, will fulfill the dictates of the trust reposed in them. They will be treated with mercy and forgiveness.

The Tafsir of the two words: Zalum and Jahul that has been reported above from most Tafsir authorities finds additional support in this last sentence as well - that these words are not meant for the whole mankind. In fact, they particularly refer to those individuals who wasted away the Divine trust reposed in them. And Allah, Pure and High, knows best.

The Commentary on

Surah Al-Ahzab ends here

With the help of and praise for Allah Ta’ ala

Commentary

عَالِمِ الْغَيْبِ (the knower of the unseen). This is an attribute of the Rabb (Lord) in whose name an oath has been taken in verse 3. At this place, out of the many attributes of Allah Ta’ ala, the attribute of all-encompassing knowledge and the knowledge of the unseen has, perhaps, been mentioned particularly because the text is dealing with the matter of the deniers of the day of Resurrection. The major reason why the disbelievers rejected the inevitability of Qiyamah, the day of doom, was their inability to comprehend how the whole thing would work out. When all human beings die, and become dust, and the particles of this dust get scattered all over the world, they wondered, how would it be possible to collect all these particles, separate the particles belonging to each human being from the particles of all others, and then go on to put the relevant particles back into the frame of everyone's existence? And they took it as impossible because they had very conveniently taken the knowledge and power of Allah Ta’ ala on the analogy of their own knowledge and power! Allah Ta’ ala has told them that His knowledge encompasses the entire universe in a manner that He knows everything in the heavens and the earth to the extent that He also knows where and in what state it is. Not a single particle of what has been created remains outside His knowledge - and this comprehensive and all-encompassing knowledge is hallmark of Allah Ta’ ala. No created entity, whether an angel or prophet, can ever have such an all-encompassing knowledge that no particle of this universe remains outside it. Then, for a Being that has such an all-encompassing knowledge, why would it be difficult to reclaim the scattered particles of a human being from all over the universe, each separate from the other, and reconstitute their bodies from these once again?

لِّيَجْزِيَ الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا

(So that He rewards those who believed - 4)

This sentence is connected with the earlier one: لَتَأْتِيَنَّكُمْ that is, al-Qiyamah or the Doomsday is bound to come and its purpose will be to reward believers and to provide for them the best sustenance from Jannah (Paradise).

And in contrast to them stand: الَّذِينَ سَعَوْا فِي آيَاتِنَا (5) i.e. those who made efforts to find faults with Our verses and tried to stop people from believing in them.

The word: مُعَاجِزِينَ which appears immediately after the verse cited above means that this effort by them was as if they would render Us helpless in seizing them and would thus go scot-free from having to be present on the last day of Qiyamah.

The sentence that follows immediately after: أُولَٰئِكَ لَهُمْ عَذَابٌ مِّن رِّ‌جْزٍ أَلِيم ; means that these people shall receive punishment, a severe punishment that will be painful.

Verse 6: وَيَرَ‌ى الَّذِينَ أُوتُوا الْعِلْمَ (34:6) talks about believers in contrast with those who denied the coming of the Qiyamah. The former had put their faith in it and became the beneficiaries of the knowledge given by Allah Ta’ ala to the Holy Prophet ﷺ by revelation.