Al-Baghawī said:

“Linguistically, hard may mean intent, withholding, or anger. Al-Hasan, Qatāda, and Abū al-ʿĀliya said: ‘With earnestness and effort.’ Al-Qurtubī (*), Mujāhid, and ʿIkrima said: ‘With a common purpose upon which they had agreed among themselves.’”

He said:

“This takes it in the sense of intent, for someone intent on something pursues it earnestly and resolutely. Abū ʿUbayda and al-Qutaybī said: ‘They set out of their own accord with hard—that is, intending to withhold from the poor.’ One says hāradat al-sana (‘the year withheld’) when it has no rain, and hāradat al-nāqatu ʿalayya (‘the she-camel withheld from me’) when she has no milk. Al-Shaʿbī and Sufyān said: ‘With resentment and anger towards the poor.’ In al-Wālibī’s commentary, Ibn ʿAbbās is reported to have said: ‘With power.’”

I say: Hard conveys firm resolve; this is inherent in the word. Its use regarding a year or a she-camel reflects its sense of severity. Likewise, resentment and anger involve intensity. They thus firmly resolved to take the garden’s produce and deprive the poor. They set out with this resolve, possessing the power to do so, with nothing to render them powerless or prevent them. But a command from heaven came upon the garden and nullified all of that. It has also been said that hard means rage and anger. Allah knows best.

A similar passage, which explicitly establishes the point at issue—that power may be exercised over concrete entities—is His saying, exalted is He:

“The life of this world is only like water which We send down from the sky”—through to His words—“Our command came upon it by night or by day, and We left it mown down, as though it had not flourished the day before,” and the rest of the verse.

His words:

“And its people thought they had power over it”

show that, were it not for the calamity, their assumption would have been correct, and they would have had power over it. But when Allah’s command came upon it, their assumption proved mistaken. Had they possessed no power over it, whether it remained intact or was destroyed, Allah would not have disproved their assumption by what He brought about