يا حَسرَةً عَلَى العِبادِ ۚ ما يَأتيهِم مِن رَسولٍ إِلّا كانوا بِهِ يَستَهزِئونَ
How regrettable of the servants! There did not come to them any apostle but that they used to deride him.
EXEGESIS
Yā-ḥasratan (how regrettable) is an expression of grief, sorrow, regret, intense lamentation, or pain, especially when someone misses out on having a thing. Furthermore, it is used by someone who is broken and left with no energy and tired, fatigued, or jaded.
Yastahziʾūn (used to deride) is from the root verb hazaʾa, meaning he mocked, scoffed, or laughed at and derided or ridiculed. It also indicates that he broke a thing, because mocking breaks the heart or the feelings of the mocked one.
EXPOSITION
This verse implies a sense of pity for what happened to the past nations and feeling sorry for them and their fate caused by rejecting the call of God. Alternatively, it could be a reproaching statement against them for the way they responded to the messengers of God. Tabatabai believes that the latter probability is more suitable here. The reason for the blame is their mocking the messengers of God: There did not come to them any apostle but that they used to deride him.
Some have considered this verse an indication of God informing the people about the pitiful place and position of the people of the town. Others have said when the destroyed people saw the punishment in barzakh, they felt regretful and made this call of regret as they wished they had believed.
However, this statement is not something specific to those people alone. The regret and blame in this verse are inclusive of all those of any time period who rebel against the messengers of God and mock them.
Words of regret and sorrow, when ascribed to God, must be interpreted in a way that befits His transcendence. It has a totally different meaning than what is perceived as regret and sorrow when attributed to a human. That is why some of the aforementioned opinions refrained from attributing the pity to God and tried to justify it by ascribing it to the angels, messengers, believers, or the people when they saw the punishment. However, if the meaning of regret is taken to mean something that befits the attribute of God, those justifications are not necessary, as Tabatabai has interpreted.
It was previously discussed that the city of Antioch at the time of Prophet Jesus (a) and his disciples was not totally inhabited by idolaters; there were Jews in the city and an increasing number of the followers of Prophet Jesus (a) and his messengers from the disciples. Some consider that the narrator has made an error by recognising the town to be Antioch. Even the narration mentioning the people of the town and their king becoming believers cannot be related to these verses because the verse indicates the complete destruction of the people of the town.
REVIEW OF TAFSĪR LITERATURE
Rāzī gives an example of a king who visits a person in a rural area who does not know he is the king. The king informs that person about his status as a king and asks him to do a simple thing, but that person does not believe that he is a king and does not fulfil his command. However, when this person visits the king in his palace and realises it was him and that he really is a king, he becomes regretful and blames himself. The messengers of God are similar; after those rejecters die and are punished, they realise that those were indeed the messengers of God, and they asked them for the simplest thing which is to worship the one, true God. Thus, when they see the reality after dying, they regret it severely and blame themselves strongly for rejecting, belying, mocking, ridiculing, hurting, and killing the messengers of God.
[1] Lane, p. 568.
[2] Lane, p. 2893.
[3] Mizan, 17/80.
[4] Tabrisi, 8/660.
[5] Amthal, 14/171.
[6] Amthal, 14/171.
[7] Razi, 26/270.