“25. We appointed for them companions who made alluring to them what lay before them and what lay behind them. The Word became due against them, as it did against nations of jinn and humankind that passed away before them. Indeed, they were losers.”

That is, We appointed for these wrongdoers who denied the truth “companions” from among the devils, as He Most High says: “Have you not seen that We send the devils against the disbelievers, inciting them relentlessly?” That is, they drive them toward sins and urge them to commit them. They did so by making alluring to them “what lay before them and what lay behind them.” They adorned this world in their eyes and invited them to its pleasures and forbidden desires until they succumbed to temptation, boldly committed sins against Allah, and pursued whatever forms of opposition to Allah and His messengers they wished. They made the Hereafter seem remote ⦗748⦘ to them and caused them to forget its remembrance. They may also have planted doubts in their minds that it would ever occur, so that fear of it departed from their hearts. Thus, they led them into disbelief, religious innovations, and sins.

Allah’s empowering and assigning devils to the deniers occurred because they turned away from the remembrance of Allah and His signs and rejected the truth, as He Most High says: “Whoever turns away from the remembrance of the Most Compassionate, We appoint for him a devil who becomes his companion. They certainly turn them away from the path, while they think they are rightly guided.”

“The Word became due against them”—that is, it became binding upon them, and the decree and predestination of their punishment came upon them—“as it did against nations of jinn and humankind that passed away before them. Indeed, they were losers.” They lost their faith and their Hereafter, and whoever suffers such loss must inevitably be humiliated, wretched, and punished.