(11–15) “How many a wrongdoing town have We shattered, raising up another people after it! When they sensed Our punishment, they immediately fled from it. ‘Do not flee! Return to the luxuries you enjoyed and to your homes, so that perhaps you may be questioned.’ They cried, ‘Woe to us! We were indeed wrongdoers.’ They continued to make this cry until We made them like a mown harvest, utterly lifeless.”
Allah Most High says—warning these wrongdoers who deny the Messenger through what He did to the nations that denied the other messengers—“How many have We shattered,” meaning: We destroyed them with an annihilating punishment; “a town” that perished to its last inhabitant, “raising up another people after it!”
When these people who were destroyed sensed Allah’s punishment and chastisement, and its descent came directly upon them, they could neither turn back nor find any way to escape. All they could do was pound the ground with their feet in regret, anxiety, and anguish over what they had done, trying to flee its onset. They were then told in mockery: “Do not flee! Return to the luxuries you enjoyed and to your homes, so that perhaps you may be questioned.” That is, neither fleeing nor regret will benefit you. Rather, if you possess any power, return to the pleasures and desires in which you lived in luxury, to your ornamented dwellings, and to the worldly life that deceived and distracted you until Allah’s command came. Settle securely there, reap its pleasures, and remain in your homes, contented and honored, so that perhaps people may once again turn to you with their concerns and petition you for their worldly needs, as they did before. But how impossible! How could they ever regain that when the time had passed, punishment and odium had overtaken them, their might, honor, and worldly life had vanished, and regret and anguish had come upon them?
Therefore, “They cried, ‘Woe to us! We were indeed wrongdoers.’ They continued to make this cry”—that is, crying out for woe and ruin, expressing regret, admitting against themselves that they had done wrong, and acknowledging that Allah was just in what He inflicted upon them—“until We made them like a mown harvest, utterly lifeless.” That is, they became like plants that have been harvested and laid low: all movement among them ceased and every voice fell silent. So beware, you who are being addressed, lest you persist in denying the noblest of messengers and the same fate befall you that befell them.