Fir'aun and Thamud are a replacement for the soldiers. He meant by Fir'aun him and his people, as in his saying, 'from Fir'aun and his chiefs.' The meaning is: you have known the denial of those soldiers of the messengers and what befell them for their denial. But those who disbelieved from your people are in denial, meaning: denial and deserving of punishment. And Allah knows their conditions and is capable of them, and they cannot escape Him. The encompassing of them from behind them is a metaphor, for they will not escape Him, just as one cannot escape something that encompasses it. The meaning of the interruption is that their affair is more astonishing than the affair of those, for they heard the stories about them and what happened to them, and they saw the traces of their destruction but did not take heed, and they denied more severely than their denial. Rather, this which they denied is a glorious Qur'an, noble, of high rank among the books, in its composition and its miraculous nature. It has been recited: 'a glorious Qur'an,' in addition, meaning: the Qur'an of a glorious Lord. And Yahya ibn Ya'mur read: 'in a tablet.' And the tablet refers to the air, meaning: the tablet above the seventh heaven in which is the preserved tablet from the access of the devils to it. And it has been read: 'preserved,' in the nominative as an attribute of the Qur'an. About the Messenger of Allah, blessings and peace be upon him: 'Whoever recites Surah Al-Burooj, Allah will grant him, for every Friday and every Day of Arafah that occurs in the world, ten good deeds.'