﴿ وَلَتَجِدَنَّهُمْ أَحْرَصَ ٱلنَّاسِ عَلَىٰ حَيَوٰةٍۢ وَمِنَ ٱلَّذِينَ أَشْرَكُوا۟ ۚ يَوَدُّ أَحَدُهُمْ لَوْ يُعَمَّرُ أَلْفَ سَنَةٍۢ وَمَا هُوَ بِمُزَحْزِحِهِۦ مِنَ ٱلْعَذَابِ أَن يُعَمَّرَ ۗ وَٱللَّهُ بَصِيرٌۢ بِمَا يَعْمَلُونَ ﴾

“And thou wilt most certainly find that they cling to life more eagerly than any other people, even more than those who are bent on ascribing divinity to other beings beside God: every one of them would love to live a thousand years, although the grant of long life could not save him from suffering [in the hereafter]: for God sees all that they do.”

And you shall find them the lām of la-tajidannahum is for oaths the people most covetous of life and more covetous of it than the idolaters who reject the idea of the Resurrection for the former know that their journey’s end will be the Fire while the idolaters do not believe even in this; any one of them would love wishes that he might be given life for a thousand years law yu‘ammar ‘if only he might be given life’ the particle law ‘if only’ relates to the verbal noun and functions with the sense of an ‘that’ and together with its relative clause explains the implicit verbal noun in the object of the verb yawaddu ‘he would love’; yet any one of them his being given life an yu‘ammara ‘that he should be given life’ constitutes the subject of the verb muzahzihihi ‘that it should budge him’ this verb comes later as though it were ta‘mīruhu ‘the giving of life to him’ shall not budge remove him from the chastisement of the Fire. God sees what they do ya‘malūna may be alternatively read ta‘malūna ‘you do’ and will requite them. ‘Abd Allāh Ibn Sūryā asked the Prophet s or ‘Umar b. al-Khattāb about which angel brings down the revelation and he replied that it was Gabriel; he Ibn Sūryā then said ‘He is our enemy because he brings chastisement with him; had it been Michael we would have believed in him because he brings fertility and security.’ Then the following was revealed