And when the condition of the disbelievers became clear, both in summary and in detail, the intended purpose of that was a lesson for the listeners. The affliction they faced and the hardship they endured, while preserving their lives and protecting their souls and understandings after the destruction of those before them, was a situation in which they would be among those who are hoped for, from whom fear is expected that necessitates humility and knowledge, certainly that the doer of that is Allah. If He had willed, He would have destroyed them due to their sins or covered their understandings such that they would become like animals, hearing nothing except a call and a summons. Their hearing, where there is no understanding, is like no hearing at all. They made that a reason for security; He denied that against them by saying: "Do they feel secure?" [Al-A'raf: 97] until the end of it. Then He denied their lack of reasoning about the power by saying, adding to "Do they feel secure?",

"Or have they not been guided" meaning: Our taking of the past nations with affliction and hardship, then their destruction if they did not take heed,

"for those who inherit the earth" and He made clear the place of the implicit by generalizing and linking the ruling to the description, indicating their ignorance for not seeking knowledge of the news to know from it what harms and what benefits, so that they would not be like animals. If they had reflected on their conditions and the conditions of those who inherited their land and the conditions of the earth, that would have sufficed them in guidance to the straight path.

And when their inheritance is not all-encompassing over time, He came with the preposition and said: "after its people". Then He mentioned the object of "guides" by saying: "that" meaning: that we,

"If We willed" meaning: at any time We wanted,

"We would strike them for their sins" meaning: a strike by which We would obliterate them as We did with those who inherited their land. And since this is a warning for those who exist after the destroyed, among them Quraysh and the other Arabs who are addressed by this Qur'an, it is as if the feared has not yet occurred. He added to "We would strike" His saying: "and We seal upon their hearts" meaning: by removing their intellects until they become like animals. And for that reason, He caused them to be described by saying:

"So they do not hear" meaning: hearing of understanding. And He expressed the strike with the past, indicating the swiftness of destruction while it is a single thing, not divided. And about the sealing, He used the present tense to imply renewal, such that there is no time that passes except they are in a new sealing.