Sūrah 70 · Āyāt 36–44

Verses 36-44 — the rebuke of the deniers, and their promised Day. The sūra closes by turning on the disbelievers who crowd the Prophet: "What ails those who disbelieve, hastening toward you, on the right and the left in companies — does every one of them covet to enter a Garden of Bliss?" (vv.36-38). The answer shatters their conceit: "By no means! We created them from what they know" (v.39) — a despised drop. Then comes the oath: "I swear by the Lord of the easts and the wests, We are able to replace them with better, and We are not to be outrun" (vv.40-41). The Prophet is told to let them be — "leave them to plunge and play until they meet their promised Day" (v.42) — pictured as the Day "they come out of the graves hastening, as if racing to a marker (nuṣub), their eyes humbled, abasement covering them: that is the Day they were promised" (vv.43-44).

The sources divide most sharply over who is rebuked. Al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī and al-Ṭabarsī both read "those who disbelieved" as the hypocrites (munāfiqūn) — men who believed outwardly, clung to the Prophet "in companies," then rejected part of the revelation — al-Mīzān finding this confirmed by "replace them with better," which implies a residue of good the obstinate polytheist lacks, and tying it to his case that the sūra is Medinan. The Enlightening Commentary, al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī preserve the older occasion: polytheists who scoffed that, were there a Resurrection, they would fare better than the believers, as they fared better in this world — answered by "We created them from what they know," the sperm-drop (al-Ḥasan; Qatāda: "you were created from filth, O son of Adam, so fear God"), since all share one despised origin and are distinguished only by faith. Al-Mīzān reads the "min" as origin and dismisses the causal and generic alternatives as feeble.

On the oath by "the Lord of the easts and the wests," the sources agree on an astronomical sense — the sun's three hundred and sixty distinct daily risings and settings across the year (Ibn ʿAbbās; al-Qummī; and ʿAlī, in the famous "Ask me" sermon al-Burhān quotes from al-Iḥtijāj, who there reconciles this verse with "the two easts and the two wests" of 55:17 and "the east and the west" of 26:28 as the year's solstices and the single daily pair). Al-Burhān alone adds the esoteric gloss of al-Ṣādiq — "the easts are the prophets, the wests the legatees." Al-Mīzān draws from the oath a chain of grammatical shifts (We → I → He → We) that make God's lordship over the risings the very principle of His creating one generation after another. On "replace them with better," al-Ṭūsī enters a careful theological caution — it does not mean God could substitute an uncreated people, neglecting the most beneficial course, but that He did in fact raise up believers who gave their lives and wealth.

On the close, the sources gloss the nuṣub of v.43 either as a road-marker or banner the resurrected race toward (al-Mīzān, who deems "idol" unlikely in God's speech; al-Jubbāʾī) or as the idols they once hastened to (Ibn ʿAbbās, Qatāda, al-Ṭabarsī). Al-Burhān reads the whole emergence-scene, with al-Bāqir, as "the Day of the rising of the Qāʾim." All converge on the final image: eyes lowered in terror, abasement covering them — "that is the Day they were promised," once denied and now seen.