“Today every soul will be recompensed for what it has earned. There will be no injustice today. Indeed, Allah is swift in reckoning.” (17)

“Warn them of the Approaching Day, when hearts will be at their throats, choking with grief. The wrongdoers will have no devoted friend, nor any intercessor whose intercession will be heeded. He knows the furtive glance of the eyes and what the breasts conceal. Allah judges in truth, while those whom they invoke besides Him judge nothing at all. Indeed, Allah alone is the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing.” (18–20)

“Have they not travelled through the land and seen what became of those before them? They were mightier than them in strength and left greater traces upon the earth, yet Allah seized them for their sins, and none could protect them from Allah.” (21)

“Today every soul will be recompensed for what it has earned”: the doer of good will be recompensed for his goodness, and the evildoer for his evil. “There will be no injustice today. Indeed, Allah is swift in reckoning.”

“Warn them of the Approaching Day”: that is, the Day of Resurrection. It is called this because it is near, for everything that is to come is near. Similar to this is His saying: “The Approaching Day has drawn near” (al-Najm 57)—that is, the Resurrection has drawn near. “When hearts will be at their throats”: out of fear, they will leave their places and rise to the throats. They will neither return to their places nor come out through their mouths, so that they might die and find relief. “Choking with grief”: distressed, filled with fear and sorrow. Suppressing anguish is when rage, fear, and sorrow surge within the heart until it is constricted by them. “The wrongdoers will have no devoted friend”: no relative who can benefit them, “nor any intercessor whose intercession will be heeded,” and who may thus intercede for them.

“He knows the furtive glance of the eyes”: that is, their treachery—secretly looking at what is unlawful. Mujahid said: “It is the eyes looking at that which Allah has forbidden.” “And what the breasts conceal.”

“Allah judges in truth, while those whom they invoke besides Him”—meaning the idols—(1) “judge nothing at all,” because they know nothing and are capable of nothing. Nafi [and Ibn Amir] (2) read it as “you invoke,” in the second person, whereas the others read it in the third person. “Indeed, Allah alone is the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing.”

“Have they not travelled through the land and seen what became of those before them? They were mightier than them in strength”: Ibn Amir read “than you,” with the second-person pronoun, and this is likewise how it appears in their codices. “And left greater traces upon the earth,” yet that did not benefit them. “Allah seized them for their sins, and none could protect them from Allah”—none to ward off the punishment from them.