As for the report transmitted by al-Ṭabarānī, it runs as follows: “Abū al-Zinbaʿ—Rūḥ ibn al-Faraj—told us; Ibrāhīm ibn Makhlad told us; al-Faḍl ibn al-Mukhtār told us, from Muḥammad ibn Muslim al-Ṭāʾifī, from Ibn Abī Najīḥ, from Mujāhid, from Jābir ibn ʿAbd Allāh who said: The Messenger of Allah ﷺ declared, ‘O Muʿādh! I am sending you to a people who follow a revealed book. Should they ask you about the Milky Way in the sky, say to them, “It is the spittle of a serpent that lies beneath the Throne.”’”

This ḥadīth is exceedingly denounced; indeed it is closer to being fabricated. Its narrator al-Faḍl ibn al-Mukhtār—Abū Sahl al-Baṣrī, who later moved to Egypt—was judged by Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī to be “unknown, a transmitter of absurdities.” Ḥāfiẓ Abū’l-Fath al-Azdī said, “His ḥadīths are highly objectionable,” while Ibn ʿAdī remarked, “No one follows him in what he relates, either in text or chain of transmission.”

Allah, Exalted is He, says:
“He is the One who shows you lightning, arousing fear and hope, who forms the heavy clouds; the thunder glorifies His praise, as do the angels in awe of Him. He sends the thunderbolts and strikes with them whom He wills, yet they dispute about Allah, and He is stern in might.” (Qur’an 13:12-13)

And He also says:
“Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth, the alternation of night and day, the ships that run upon the sea carrying what benefits people, the water Allah sends down from the sky—reviving thereby the earth after its death—His scattering in it of every kind of creature, the directing of the winds, and the clouds held between heaven and earth, are surely signs for a people who use their reason.” (Qur’an 2:164)

Imām Aḥmad relates, through Yazīd ibn Hārūn, from Ibrāhīm ibn Saʿd, from his father, from an elder of the Banū Ghifār, that he heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ say: “Allah forms the clouds; they speak with the finest speech and laugh with the best laughter.”

Mūsā ibn ʿUbaydah narrates on the authority of Saʿd ibn Ibrāhīm: “Their speech is the thunder and their laughter is the lightning.”

Ibn Abī Ḥātim reports: My father told us; Hishām ibn ʿUbayd Allah al-Rāzī told us; Muḥammad ibn Muslim told us, saying, “It has reached us that the lightning is an angel with four faces: the face of a human, the face of a bull, the face of an eagle, and the face of a lion. When he lashes his tail, that is the lightning.”