And when this was His practice in the past centuries and among the previous nations, He, the Exalted, said, referring to His saying ﴿They have a promised time﴾ [Al-Kahf: 58], terrifying them by indicating their depicted abodes of destruction: ﴿And those towns﴾ meaning the past ones from 'Aad, Thamud, Midian, and the people of Lut, and their like ﴿We destroyed them﴾ meaning We decreed their destruction by virtue of Our greatness ﴿when they wronged﴾ meaning when they first wronged, or We destroyed them by action at the time of their wrongdoing, but not at the beginning; rather, We granted them respite until the time of their end and reaching the limit. So let these beware of something similar. ﴿And We made﴾ meaning by virtue of Our greatness ﴿for their destruction﴾ meaning their destruction by action ﴿a promised time﴾ meaning a time we will fulfill with them in it and a place we will not fail to meet, just as We made for these a promise in this world on the day of Badr, the opening, Hunayn, and the like, and in the Hereafter, We will not fail it. And likewise, every matter that a prophet says about Us will not have any contradiction in it, even if it is permissible for us to do so, unlike what he says from himself not attributed to us, for it is possible for contradiction to occur in it, just as there occurred in the promise regarding the news of these matters a delay of forty nights or less, according to their understanding that 'tomorrow' is in its reality.