And when He, glorified and exalted is He, attributed the lack of forgiveness to their wickedness, and brought the apparent in place of the implied as an indication of their being characterized by it and linking the ruling to the description, He explained their persistence in wickedness after having stated that the hypocrites are some of them from others; they are like a single body by His saying: ﴿The left behind rejoiced﴾, meaning: those whose being left behind occurred by Your permission for them and Allah's dislike of their being sent forth ﴿with their sitting﴾, meaning: their sitting out from the expedition of Tabuk. And perhaps He expressed this source for its suitability to the place of sitting so that it would indicate joy more significantly regarding the subject, and this is narrated from Ibn Abbas, may Allah be pleased with them both. And He emphasized the description of being left behind in place of the pronoun as an increase in the disparagement of what they were pleased with for themselves. And He also increased the disparagement by His saying: ﴿contrary to﴾, meaning: after and behind, or for the sake of the contradiction of ﴿the Messenger of Allah﴾, meaning: the greatest king, for whoever is left behind from his party is doomed ﴿and they disliked to strive﴾.

And when this was in the context of wealth, sometimes with pleasure in attaining it and displeasure in being deprived of it, and sometimes with withholding the hand from spending it, and sometimes with enjoying the contradiction which is the share that is broader than being with wealth or self, and sometimes with the blame of the spenders and other than that of its affairs, He preceded His saying: ﴿with their wealth and themselves﴾ over His saying: ﴿in the way of Allah﴾, meaning: the path of the king who has the attributes of perfection; because there is no motivation of faith in them nor a call to certainty that motivated the believers. And this indicated their deep-rootedness in wickedness, for indeed a person may commit a sin and feel sorrow for committing it, while these people were pleased with it despite its baseness. And a person may be pleased with sin and not dislike that there be obedience instead of it or with it, while these people combined their joy in it with a dislike for obedience. And a person may dislike and not forbid others, while these people gathered all of that together, forbidding others. So they did all of that ﴿and they said﴾, meaning: to others ﴿Do not flee in the heat﴾, distancing themselves from Islam and being blind to the master of judgments; for indeed the expedition of Tabuk was in the intensity of heat.

And when this is the saying of one who has not thought of the Hereafter, Allah, the Most High, commanded him to beware of those who listen to them or turn to them by saying: "Say"; meaning: O the Most Knowledgeable of our creation, to show ignorance towards them. "The Fire of Hell"; meaning: which Allah has prepared for those who oppose His command. "More intense in heat"; and the reference of the speech to the absent indicates that the greatest intended meaning of this admonition is the weak believers, so that they do not resemble them out of hope for patience. So Allah, the Most High, said: "If they were"; meaning: the hypocrites, "to understand"; meaning: if they had understanding by which they knew the truthfulness of the Messenger and the power of His Sender over what He has warned of, they would have known that. Therefore, they would not flee from the heat to a heat more intense than it; for whoever flees from the heat of an hour to the heat of eternity is among the most ignorant of the ignorant. And Abu Hayyan said: When Allah, the Most High, mentioned what appeared of hypocrisy and mockery from those who went out with him to the Battle of Tabuk from the hypocrites, He mentioned the state of the hypocrites who did not go out with him, meaning in His saying: "The left behind rejoiced". This ends here.

So the verse then becomes an answer to one who might say: These are the conditions of those who went out, so what is the state of those who stayed behind? And it has been established with what is in this verse of descriptions, Ka'b ibn Malik and his two companions, may Allah be pleased with them, and others who did not rejoice in staying behind nor were described with what was mentioned along with their descriptions.