He says to His Messenger, blessings and peace be upon him, 'And if We had wished, We would have eased your burdens of warning all the villages.' And We would have sent in every village a prophet to warn it. Rather, We limited the matter to you and magnified you by it, and honored you and preferred you over all the other messengers. So respond to that with firmness and patience. Do not obey the disbelievers in what they want from you. He means by this to provoke you and to provoke the believers and to stir them. The pronoun refers to the Qur'an or to the abandonment of obedience indicated by: 'So do not obey.' The intended meaning is that the disbelievers strive and exert themselves to weaken your matter. So respond to them with your diligence and effort and by clenching your teeth in a way that overcomes them and elevates you. And He made it a great struggle due to the immense hardships it entails. It is possible that the pronoun in 'by it' refers to what is indicated by: 'And if We had wished, We would have sent in every village a warner,' in the sense of being a warner for all the villages. Because if a warner had been sent to every village, each warner would have had to struggle against his village. Thus, all those struggles gathered upon the Messenger of Allah, blessings and peace be upon him, making his struggle greater and more significant. So He said to him, 'And struggle against them because you are the warner for all the villages, a great struggle encompassing all struggles.'