And when He threatened the deniers with the destruction of the former peoples, who were stronger than them and more numerous, and He presented the story of Musa, blessings and peace be upon him, for the relevance of the book in itself first; and in its gradual revelation second, He followed it with the first of the nations, because they were the first, and because of the horror in their punishment, and for the relevance between him and the punishment of the Egyptians. He said: ﴿And the people﴾ meaning: And We destroyed the people of ﴿Nuh﴾ when they denied the messengers by denying Nuh; because whoever denies one of the prophets in action has certainly denied all of them in essence, because the miracles are the proof of their truthfulness, and they are equal in their nature as extraordinary occurrences, which cannot be opposed. Thus, denying any one of them is a denial of all, because there is no difference, and because they denied those who had passed from the prophets, blessings and peace be upon them, regarding what they heard of their news, and because they justified their denial by saying that he was one of the humans, so they were obliged to deny every messenger from among the humans.

And when it was as if it was said: By what were they destroyed? He said: ﴿We drowned them﴾ as We drowned the people of Fir'awn with something greater than what We drowned them with ﴿And We made them﴾ meaning the people of Nuh in that ﴿for the people a sign﴾ meaning a sign of Our power over what We will of bringing forth water and otherwise, and its removal, and the control over that in all that We desire, and the salvation of whom We will by what We destroyed their enemy with ﴿And We have prepared﴾ meaning We have made ready a very close preparation and have brought forth in a massive and severe manner, fully determined; and the original was: for them, but He showed it in a generalization and a connection of the ruling by description, so He said: ﴿for the wrongdoers﴾ meaning all of them, in any time they were, for their wrongdoing by placing things in other than their rightful places ﴿a painful punishment﴾ especially in the Hereafter.