“…‘We can only assume he has gone off to take care of some need.’ Yet he kept walking until he reached the rim of the pit, where he began calling them by their names and the names of their fathers: ‘O so-and-so son of so-and-so, and O so-and-so son of so-and-so! Would it not have delighted you to have obeyed Allah and His Messenger? We have found the promise our Lord made to us to be true—have you found the promise your Lord made to you to be true?’

ʿUmar said, ‘Messenger of Allah, how can you speak to bodies that possess no souls?’ He replied, ‘By Him in whose hand is my soul, you are no better able to hear what I am saying than they are.’

Qatādah commented: ‘Allah revived them so that they might hear his words—out of rebuke, humiliation, vengeance, grief, and regret.’ Sound.

Hishām related, from his father, from Ibn ʿUmar, that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ stood over the well of Badr and said, ‘They hear what I am saying.’ ʿUrwah reported that this reached ʿĀʾishah, who remarked, ‘That is not exactly what the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said. Rather, he said, “They now know that what I used to tell them was the truth; they have settled into their seats in Hellfire.” Allah says, “Indeed, you cannot make the dead hear” (Qur’an 27:80) and “You cannot make those in the graves hear” (35:22-23).’ Al-Bukhārī recorded it.

What ʿĀʾishah narrated does not contradict what Ibn ʿUmar and others reported, for their knowing does not preclude their hearing his words ﷺ. As for the statement, ‘You cannot make the dead hear,’ it remains true—Allah simply brought them to life at that moment, just as He brings the dead to life for the questioning by Munkar and Nakīr.

ʿAmr ibn Dīnār narrated, from ʿAṭāʾ, from Ibn ʿAbbās regarding Allah’s words, “They exchanged the favor of Allah for disbelief” (Qur’an 14:28): he said, ‘They are the unbelievers of Quraysh.’ “And led their people to the home of ruin” (14:28) refers, he said, ‘to the Fire on the Day of Badr.’ Al-Bukhārī recorded it.