(27–28) “We certainly destroyed the towns around you and presented the signs in various ways, so that they might return. Why, then, did those whom they had taken as gods besides Allah to bring them near not help them? Rather, they deserted them. That was their falsehood and what they used to fabricate.”

Allah Most High warns the polytheists of Arabia and others by recounting the destruction of the denying nations whose lands surrounded theirs. Indeed, many of them had lived in the Arabian Peninsula itself, such as Ād, Thamūd, and others. Allah Most High presented the signs to them in various ways and from every angle, “so that they might return” from the disbelief and denial they persisted in.

When they did not believe, Allah seized them with the irresistible might of One Almighty and All-Powerful. Their gods whom they invoked besides Allah availed them nothing. Hence He says here, “Why, then, did those whom they had taken as gods besides Allah to bring them near not help them?” That is, they sought nearness through them and worshipped them in the hope of benefiting from them.

“Rather, they deserted them”: they neither answered them nor protected them. “That was their falsehood and what they used to fabricate”—the lies with which they deluded themselves by claiming that they were upon the truth and that their deeds would benefit them. Yet all those claims vanished and came to nothing.