(181–182) “Allah has certainly heard the words of those who said, ‘Indeed, Allah is poor, while we are rich.’ We will record what they said and their killing of the prophets without right, and We will say, ‘Taste the punishment of the Blazing Fire. That is because of what your own hands have sent forth, and Allah is never unjust to His servants.’”

Allah Most High relates the words of these rebellious people, who made the most hideous, abhorrent, and repugnant statement. He declares that He heard what they said and that He will record and preserve it, together with their heinous deeds—namely, their killing of the prophets who sincerely counseled them. He will punish them for all of this with the severest punishment. In response to their claim, “Indeed, Allah is poor, while we are rich,” they will be told: “Taste the punishment of the Blazing Fire”—a searing punishment that penetrates from their bodies into their hearts.

Their punishment is not an injustice from Allah, for He “is never unjust to His servants.” He is far above such a thing. Rather, it is because of the disgraceful and vile deeds their own hands sent forth, which made them deserving of punishment and deprived them of reward.

The commentators have mentioned that this verse was revealed concerning a group of Jews who made this statement. Among those they named was Finhās ibn Āzūrā, one of the leading Jewish scholars in Medina. When he heard Allah Most High say, “Who is it that will lend Allah a goodly loan?” and, “And lend Allah a goodly loan,” he made this statement out of arrogance and brazen insolence—may Allah disgrace him. Allah therefore related their statement and declared that it was not unprecedented among their heinous deeds. Rather, they had previously committed a comparable atrocity: “their killing of the prophets without right.”

The qualification “without right” signifies that they dared to kill the prophets despite knowing how heinous that act was. They did not do so out of ignorance or error, but out of rebellion and obstinacy.