His saying, exalted and majestic is He: "Indeed, those who disbelieve in the signs of Allah and kill the prophets unjustly and kill those who command justice among the people, so give them tidings of a painful punishment." "Those are the ones whose deeds have become worthless in this world and the Hereafter, and they will have no helpers." Muhammad ibn Ja'far ibn al-Zubair and others said: This verse is about the Jews and Christians. The judge Abu Muhammad, may Allah have mercy on him, said: It encompasses everyone who is in this state. The verse is a reprimand to those contemporary to the Messenger of Allah, blessings and peace be upon him, for the evils of their ancestors and for their own persistence in doing what they could of those evils; because they were eager to kill Muhammad, peace be upon him. It has been narrated that the Children of Israel killed seventy prophets in one day, and the market of vegetables flourished afterwards. Abu Ubaidah ibn al-Jarrah narrated from the Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him, "They killed forty-three prophets, and a hundred and twenty of their best and scholars gathered to change and deny, and they were all killed, all of that in one day;" and that is the meaning of His saying, exalted and majestic is He: "and kill those who command justice." And His saying, exalted and majestic is He: "unjustly" is an exaggeration in the 'liberation of the sin, as it could possibly entail Allah's command in some way of honoring the prophet or otherwise. And on this meaning, the forms of 'more than this' come, if there is a commonality in them, like: 'more beloved' and 'better' and 'superior' and the like, being a statement between two things whose outward appearance is that they share something. The majority of the people read: "and kill those who," while Hamzah and a group from outside the seven read: "and fight those who," and in the mushaf of Ibn Mas'ud: "and fight those who," and Al-A'mash read it, and all of them are valid, and the clearest is the reading of the majority. Justice is fairness, and the tidings of punishment came from where it was specified, and if the tidings come unrestricted, then its generality is in what is commendable. The 'fa' in His saying: "so give them tidings" is due to the meaning of 'the one who' in this context, so it is like your saying: 'the one who does such and such, for him is such and such,' if you intend that this will only be for him because of his doing the other thing, so the action is in its relation, and it is such that no factor enters upon it that changes its meaning, like 'if only' and 'perhaps,' and this meaning is a text in the book of Sibawayh in a chapter whose title is: 'This is the chapter of the letters that take the place of command and prohibition, because they contain the meaning of command and prohibition.' "And their deeds have become worthless" means: they have become invalid and their ruling has fallen, and their worthlessness in this world is the persistence of blame and curse upon them, and their worthlessness in the Hereafter is being like scattered dust and their punishment for it. Ibn Abbas and Abu al-Sammal al-Adawi read: "have become worthless" with a fatḥah on the bā', and this is a dialect, then he negated assistance from them in both cases.