And when He described it with tyranny over creation and dominance over them, in a way that it was extraordinary and unprecedented, neither similar to it came before nor after, it indicated its smallness in relation to His greatness. And that He is the One who created it, not nature or anything else. Rather, it was by His power and choice, overpowering those who criticized His dominion and denied His messengers in what they informed about the matter of the Hour, which is the place of wisdom and the manifestation of all greatness. So He said, beginning a statement indicating that: "He subjected it," meaning He subdued it to be under His command. And the subjugation is the use of something with capability. This indicated that it is a subjugation of punishment, not of mercy and upbringing, with the tool of exaltation. He said: "upon them," and He charged it with that and made it submissive to Him, so it could not, with its tyranny, do anything but be obedient to His command and the work of His greatness and His overpowering.

And when this surah was to affirm matters, and to reveal the problematic and clarify the hidden, it affirmed in it the time of their punishment in a way that had not preceded it. So He mentioned the days and the nights, and He prioritized the nights because the calamities in them are more horrific, disgraceful, and terrible due to the scarcity of helpers and the ignorance of the means and the concealment in the objectives and the outlets. And because their number is masculine in wording, and the masculine wording is more indicative of the strength of the meaning. For this reason, He made the distinguished in a multitude. And because it is seven, and the seven is an exaggerated number, it is the most comprehensive number as will be confirmed soon in the bearers of the Throne. And it cannot be thought that by prioritizing it, the beginning of the punishment was in it, for it would then necessitate that it be by the number of the days. Therefore, He said: "seven nights," meaning it does not cease in it the wind for a moment, for it has been exaggerated in its severity to an extent that has never been before it nor will be after it. And "and eight days" is likewise in its state, "cutting off" is the plural of cutting, meaning with a sense that prevents from action, continuously and repeatedly without any pause. From cutting by branding, it is a severing of all good, an uprooting of it. So it came upon them without any pause at all in all the time, thus it uprooted them, and there remained not one of them, until an old woman among them hid in a burrow, and it seized her and destroyed her. And by it, it was named the days of the old woman, or because it is the weakness of winter, which is [the one with] cold and severe winds, and it is from the morning of Wednesday for eight days remaining from Shawwal until the sunset of the last Wednesday, which is the end of the month. And it was necessitated by the increase in the number of days that the beginning was certainly in it, otherwise the nights would not have been seven. So reflect on that.

And when the decisive destroyer was present, it caused his saying to depict their past state: "So you see the people"; meaning those who are at the utmost ability regarding what they attempt: "in it"; meaning in that period of days and nights, none of them delayed from it: "fallen"; meaning lying on the ground, dead, crushed, with the severity of its pressure evident upon them, humiliation and degradation apparent. The plural of "fallen": "as if they were the trunks"; meaning the roots of "palm trees" that have aged and become frail, thus they are in the utmost state of weakness and old age: "hollow"; meaning having decayed interiors, fallen down, from the falling of the star at sunset, and from the emptiness of the dwelling when it is devoid of its inhabitants. They said: It would enter through their mouths and exit what was in their interiors from their backsides. So the description is due to the enormity of their bodies and the cutting of the wind for them, and its severing of their heads, and their being devoid of life and its darkness for them.