Surah 44. Ad-Dukhan, Ayah 34

Although, on the face of it, by "these people" the Israelites are meant, the reference is obviously a general one, applying to all who hold the views expressed in the sequence, and in particular to the pagan contemporaries of the Prophet Muhammad. Nevertheless, there is a subtle connection between this passage and the preceding allusion to the "test" with which the children of Israel were to be faced: for it is a historical fact that up to the time of the destruction of the Second Temple and their dispersion by the Roman emperor Titus, the priestly aristocracy among the Jews, known as the Sadducees, openly denied the concepts of resurrection, divine judgment and life in the hereafter, and advocated a thoroughly materialistic outlook on life.

The cases of the Egyptians and the Israelites having been cited as great nations which fell through inordinate vanity and wrong-doing, the case is now pressed home against the Quraish leaders in their arrogance to the holy Prophet himself. They deny Revelation; they deny a future life, as the Sadducees did among the Jews before them; they persecute the prophet of Allah, and those who believe in him: and they mockingly demand that their ancestors should be brought back to life, if it is true that there is a future life. They are reminded that better men than they lived in their own country of Arabia, men who had knowledge of Allah's revelation under the earliest Dispensation. See next note. They perished because of their unbelief and wrong-doing. What chance have they unless they turn and repent?