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Before thee. The Unbelievers did not believe in a Hereafter. When the Bliss of the Hereafter was described, as in the last verse, they ridiculed it and pretended to be running in for it as in a race. They are here rebuked in the same tone of sarcasm.
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This, again, connects with the statement in verse {19}, "man is born with a restless disposition" (see note [7] above). People who do not want to see the truth of God's existence and have, therefore, no solid basis on which to build their world-view, are, by the same token, unable to conceive any definite standards of personal and social ethics. Hence, whenever they are confronted with anyone's positive assertion of faith, they "run about to and fro" in spiritual confusion, trying, in order to justify themselves intellectually, to demolish the premises of that faith by means of many-sided, contradictory arguments - an endeavour depicted in the metaphor "coming upon thee from the right and from the left"; and since they derive all their strength from a conformity with shallow mass-opinions, they can do this only "in crowds".
Some Meccan pagans used to gather around the Prophet (ﷺ) to mock him and the believers, saying that if there is in fact a Hereafter, they are better entitled to Paradise than the poor believers.
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I.e., "Do they hope to achieve inner peace and fulfilment by 'disproving' another person's faith?"
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Namely, out of "dust", - i.e., out of the same primitive organic and inorganic substances as are found in and on the earth: the implication being that only spiritual consciousness and endeavour can raise man above the mere material form of his existence, and thus enable him to achieve the inner fulfilment metaphorically described here as "a garden of bliss".
i.e., from a humble fluid. See 32:8.
The animal part of man is nothing to be proud of, and they know it. It is by spiritual effort, and long preparation through a good life that a man can rise above the mere animal part of him to his high dignity as a spiritual being, and his noble destiny in the Hereafter.
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I.e., of all the variation, throughout the solar year, of the points at which the sun "rises" and "sets": thus stressing the fact that He is the Ultimate Cause of all orbital movement in the universe and, hence, its Creator (cf. 37:5 and 55:17 ).
The daily points of sunrise and sunset, caused by the earth’s rotation around its own axis.
For the form of adjuration, cf. lxix. 38, n. 5665; also lvi. 75. Here the witness placed before us by Allah is His own power and glory manifested in the splendour of sunrise and sunset at different points through the solar year.
See n. 4034 to xxxvii. 5. If Allah has such power in the wonderful phenomena of the rising of the sun at varying points, repeated year after year, can you not see that He can easily substitute better men than you Unbelievers and blasphemers?
The transition from the singular "I" to the plural "We" may be noted. See n. 56 to ii. 38.
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The implication is that it is not His will to replace "those who are bent on denying the truth" in this world, by believers, inasmuch as such a "replacement" would not be in accord with His design of multiform human existence, in which faith is always challenged and tested by unbelief, and vice versa.
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I.e., their philosophising about a supposedly "uncreated" world and a hypothetical "self-generation" of life, as well as their blatant "denial", unsupported by any factual evidence, of a life after death or even of the existence of God.
Their talk, their scepticism, is vain, because all spiritual evidence is against it; it is like the foolish play of people who do not think seriously. But the tremendous Day of Judgment and Reality will come, as described in the next two verses.
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Or “… as if rushing towards a target.”
Now there will be a definite Goal-post or Banner or Standard of Truth fixed, which all must acknowledge. But they will acknowledge it in shame and dejection. For the time for their repentance and amendment will then have passed.
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The concept of "again and again" - i.e., by a succession, through the ages, of prophetic revelations - is implied in the auxiliary verb kanu, which usually connotes repetition and/or duration.
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