And when He, glorified and exalted is He, answered them, He expressed that by saying, "So We struck"; meaning after this saying and because of it, "upon their ears"; meaning We blocked them and held them back from hearing. The original of it is: We struck a veil over them with a heavy sleep from which the sounds do not disturb, because whoever is awake or sleeping lightly and his hearing is sound hears the sounds. "In the cave"; meaning the known place.

And when the duration of their stay was indefinite due to what was with the people of that time of polytheism, He expressed what indicates the indefinite by saying, "years". And when it was perhaps thought that He mentioned the years for exaggeration due to the distance of this sleep from the norm, He affirmed the matter by saying, substituting from it a defined term, for the intended meaning of the plural of the few here is the many: "a number"; meaning numerous. Al-Zajjaj said: Everything that is counted when the number is mentioned and described is intended to indicate its abundance, because when it is few, its quantity is understood without needing to be counted.