أَم آتَيناهُم كِتابًا مِن قَبلِهِ فَهُم بِهِ مُستَمسِكونَ
Did We give them a book before this, so that they are holding fast to it?
EXEGESIS
The question posed here is a rhetorical one that is meant to show incredulity and negation.
This in before this refers to the Holy Quran.
Mustamsikūn (holding fast to it) is the plural active participle stemming from the root verb masaka, which means to retain something whilst protecting it. When this root is conjugated into istamsaka, it can either mean to request or attempt to retain something, or it simply emphasises masaka. The former meaning, which has been accepted by some exegetes, seems to have been chosen by Irving, who translates the verse as: ‘Or have We given them a book already which they try to hold on to?’ Other exegetes explicitly deny this meaning and state that emphasis is intended here.
EXPOSITION
Building upon the refutation of the polytheists’ intellectual argument in the previous verse, this verse extends the critique by invalidating any potential textual justification they could offer for their practice of worshipping angels. By systematically dismantling both their intellectual and scriptural arguments, the verses present a comprehensive challenge to the polytheists’ beliefs and actions (see also 30:35, 34:44, 35:40, 37:156-157, 46:4, and 68:37).
The arguments of the polytheists presented in this set of verses is repeated in an almost identical manner in 6:148, whereby again they are asked to present textual evidence to support their claims: The polytheists will say: ‘Had Allah wished we would not have ascribed any partner [to Him], nor our fathers, nor would we have forbidden anything.’ Those who were before them had denied likewise until they tasted Our punishment. Say: ‘Do you have any [revealed] knowledge that you can produce before us? You follow nothing but conjectures, and you do nothing but surmise.’
[1] Mizan, 18/93.
[2] Tahqiq, 11/119.
[3] Tahqiq, 11/120.
[4] Alusi, 13/73.