وَقَالَ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا لِرُسُلِهِمْ لَنُخْرِجَنَّكُم مِّنْ أَرْضِنَا أَوْ لَتَعُودُنَّ فِي مِلَّتِنَا ۖ فَأَوْحَىٰ إِلَيْهِمْ رَبُّهُمْ لَنُهْلِكَنَّ الظَّالِمِينَ
But the faithless said to their apostles, ‘Surely we will expel you from our land, or you shall revert to our creed.’ Thereat their Lord revealed to them: ‘We will surely destroy the wrongdoers,
وَلَنُسْكِنَنَّكُمُ الْأَرْضَ مِن بَعْدِهِمْ ۚ ذَٰلِكَ لِمَنْ خَافَ مَقَامِي وَخَافَ وَعِيدِ
and surely We will settle you in the land after them. This [promise] is for someone who is awed to stand before Me and fears My threat.’
وَاسْتَفْتَحُوا وَخَابَ كُلُّ جَبَّارٍ عَنِيدٍ
They prayed for victory [against the infidels], and every obstinate tyrant was defeated,
مِّن وَرَائِهِ جَهَنَّمُ وَيُسْقَىٰ مِن مَّاءٍ صَدِيدٍ
with hell lying ahead of him, [where] he shall be given to drink of a purulent fluid,
يَتَجَرَّعُهُ وَلَا يَكَادُ يُسِيغُهُ وَيَأْتِيهِ الْمَوْتُ مِن كُلِّ مَكَانٍ وَمَا هُوَ بِمَيِّتٍ ۖ وَمِن وَرَائِهِ عَذَابٌ غَلِيظٌ
gulping it down, but hardly swallowing it: death will assail him from every side, but he will not die, and there is [yet] a harsh punishment ahead of him.
مَّثَلُ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا بِرَبِّهِمْ ۖ أَعْمَالُهُمْ كَرَمَادٍ اشْتَدَّتْ بِهِ الرِّيحُ فِي يَوْمٍ عَاصِفٍ ۖ لَّا يَقْدِرُونَ مِمَّا كَسَبُوا عَلَىٰ شَيْءٍ ۚ ذَٰلِكَ هُوَ الضَّلَالُ الْبَعِيدُ
A parable of those who defy their Lord: their deeds are like ashes over which the wind blows hard on a tempestuous day: they have no power over anything they have earned. That is extreme error.
أَلَمْ تَرَ أَنَّ اللَّهَ خَلَقَ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضَ بِالْحَقِّ ۚ إِن يَشَأْ يُذْهِبْكُمْ وَيَأْتِ بِخَلْقٍ جَدِيدٍ
Have you not regarded that Allah created the heavens and the earth with justice? If He wishes, He will take you away, and bring about a new creation,
وَمَا ذَٰلِكَ عَلَى اللَّهِ بِعَزِيزٍ
and that is not a formidable thing for Allah.
وَبَرَزُوا لِلَّهِ جَمِيعًا فَقَالَ الضُّعَفَاءُ لِلَّذِينَ اسْتَكْبَرُوا إِنَّا كُنَّا لَكُمْ تَبَعًا فَهَلْ أَنتُم مُّغْنُونَ عَنَّا مِنْ عَذَابِ اللَّهِ مِن شَيْءٍ ۚ قَالُوا لَوْ هَدَانَا اللَّهُ لَهَدَيْنَاكُمْ ۖ سَوَاءٌ عَلَيْنَا أَجَزِعْنَا أَمْ صَبَرْنَا مَا لَنَا مِن مَّحِيصٍ
Together they will be presented before Allah. Then those who were weak will say to the arrogant [leaders], ‘Indeed we were your followers. So will you avail us against Allah’s punishment in any wise?’ They will say, ‘Had Allah guided us, surely we would have guided you. It is the same to us whether we are restless or patient: there is no escape for us.’
English translation: Ali Quli Qarai
What the passage says. Disbelieving nations threaten their messengers with expulsion or forced reversion to the ancestral creed (13); God answers by oath that He will destroy the wrongdoers and settle the believers in the land — a triumph reserved for whoever fears His station (maqām) and His threat (14). The messengers (or both parties) seek a verdict, and every obstinate tyrant (jabbār ʿanīd) is frustrated (15); before him lies Hell and a drink of festering pus (ṣadīd) (16) that he can scarcely swallow as death assails him from every side yet he cannot die, with a harsher punishment beyond (17). The disbelievers' deeds are likened to ashes scattered by the wind on a stormy day (18). Verses 19–21 pivot to God's creative power "in truth," His ability to replace mankind with a new creation, and the Resurrection quarrel between the weak (ḍuʿafāʾ) and the arrogant (mustakbirūn), who confess they have no refuge.
How each present source reads it.
Philology and verdict. Al-Ṭabarsī (Majmaʿ al-Bayān) and al-Ṭūsī (al-Tibyān) give the fullest linguistic apparatus, largely in agreement: istiftāḥ = seeking victory/judgment (Mujāhid, Qatāda; al-Jubbāʾī glosses fatḥ as "judgment," fattāḥ as "judge"); jabbār is blame for a servant but praise for God; ṣadīd is pus explaining the "water." Both treat maqāmī as the servant's standing before God for reckoning, God attributing the "standing" to Himself "because they stand by His command" (al-Ṭabarsī). Al-Ṭabarsī alone preserves the long Prophetic narration (via Shuʿayb b. Wāqid ← al-Ḥusayn b. Zayd ← al-Ṣādiq) on ṭīnat al-khabāl as the wine-drinker's drink. Al-Ṭūsī closes with the strongest anti-imitation note, citing ʿAlī's dictum to al-Ḥārith al-Hamdānī: "Know the truth and you will know its people."
Theology. Al-Mīzān (Ṭabāṭabāʾī) reads maqāmī doubly — a maṣdar mīmī (God's qiyām over all affairs) or a noun of place (the rank of His qayyūmiyya) — and grounds vv19–21 in his signature thesis: creation "in truth" means every being moves toward a real goal; were man removed without a new creation, the cosmos would lapse into "play" (laʿib), which God's essential self-sufficiency (ʿazīz ghanī) forbids. He reads barazū lillāh as the falling-away of every imagined veil between servant and Lord at the Resurrection.
Imāmī narration. Al-Qummī and al-Bahrānī (al-Burhān) carry the distinctively Shīʿī layer. Both gloss v18 through ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm: whoever does not affirm the walāya of the Commander of the Faithful, his deed is voided like wind-blown ash. Al-Bahrānī amplifies this with al-Kulaynī's "stray sheep" parable (via Muḥammad b. Muslim ← Abū Jaʿfar): worship without a God-given Imām is rejected striving. On v15 al-Bahrānī preserves the dramatic istiftāḥ asbāb al-nuzūl — the al-Ḥārith b. ʿAmr al-Fihrī episode tied to Sūrat al-Maʿārij ("a questioner asked… in the walāya of ʿAlī") and the muṣḥaf of Fāṭima — and on v21/22 the eschatological scene of Iblīs disowning "Zufar," punished doubly "for his transgression against ʿAlī." For v16, al-Qummī, al-Ṭabarsī and al-Bahrānī converge (citing al-Ṣādiq) that the ṣadīd is the discharge of the fornicatresses in the Fire.
Published English. The Enlightening Commentary (provided as published English) supplies the running translation and accessible exposition for the whole block.
Convergence and divergence. All sources agree on the lexical core (istiftāḥ, ṣadīd, jabbār ʿanīd) and on the deeds-as-ashes image. The Sunnī-inflected grammatical tradition (al-Ṭabarsī, al-Ṭūsī) and the philosophical reading (al-Mīzān) treat v18 as a universal moral parable; the narration sources (al-Qummī, al-Bahrānī) recast it specifically as the nullity of works divorced from walāya. Al-Ṭabarsī uniquely draws an anti-Determinist (al-Mujbira) inference from God's attributing the deeds to the disbelievers.