﴿128﴾ “Has it not become clear to them how many generations We destroyed before them, through whose dwellings they now walk? Surely in that are signs for people of understanding.”

That is: Has what Allah inflicted upon the deniers before them not guided these deniers who turn away, showing them that they should follow the path of right guidance and avoid the path of error and corruption? Those were bygone generations and successive nations whose accounts they know, whose tales they pass down, and whose dwellings they see with their own eyes after their demise—the peoples of Hūd, Salih, Lot, and others. When they denied Our messengers and turned away from Our Books, We afflicted them with a painful punishment.

What, then, makes these people feel secure that the same fate which befell those nations will not befall them? “Are your disbelievers any better than those? Or have you been granted immunity in the Scriptures? * Or do they say, ‘We are a united host that will prevail’?” None of these things is true. These disbelievers are not better than those nations, such that punishment would be averted from them because of their goodness. Rather, they are worse, for they have disbelieved in the noblest Messenger and the best Book. Nor do they possess any written immunity or covenant from Allah. Neither is it as they claim—that their assembled force will benefit them and protect them. They are far too weak and insignificant for that.

The destruction of past generations for their sins is therefore one of the means of guidance, for it is among the signs demonstrating the truthfulness of the messengers sent to them and the falsity of the way they followed. Yet not everyone benefits from the signs. Only people of understanding benefit from them: those endowed with sound minds, upright natural dispositions, and intellects that restrain them from what is improper.