أَتَّخَذناهُم سِخرِيًّا أَم زاغَت عَنهُمُ الأَبصارُ

Did we ridicule them [unduly in the world], or do [our] eyes miss them [here]?’

EXEGESIS

Attakhadhnāhum sikhriyyan (did we ridicule them) literally means: Did we take them as a thing to be ridiculed? Obviously, the context here tells us that this statement is said in the tone of disbelief and surprise. In this sense it would mean: Did we really make fun of them for no reason other than our own foolishness? Or: Is it because we had ridiculed them in the world that we do not see them now in hell, or are they in hell and our eyes miss them?

It is also possible to understand the initial hamzah as not being interrogative but informative, so the sentence would be read as a lamentation: We took them as a thing to be ridiculed.^{‎[1]Baydawi, 5/33.}

EXPOSITION

As we mentioned in the previous verse, the people of hell are unsure whether those they thought should be in hell are actually in hell, or were they themselves mistaken in thinking that they too were in the wrong and evil, foolishly mocking them without reason. Unable to let go of their spiteful attitude they doubt their own senses, wondering whether they are actually in hell with them and they simply cannot see them there.^{‎[2]Tibyan, 8/578; Mizan, 17/220.}

The notion of ridiculing the believers also ties in with the mocking supplication of the faithless earlier in the surah.

REVIEW OF TAFSĪR LITERATURE

Makārim Shīrāzī has understood the statement or do [our] eyes miss them to mean ‘we used to consider them so insignificant that we did not even notice their existence’.^{‎[3]Nemuneh, 19/326.}

INSIGHTS FROM OTHER TRADITIONS

1. You have made us an object of derision to our neighbours, and our enemies mock us.^{‎[4]Psalms 80:6.}

[1] Baydawi, 5/33.
[2] Tibyan, 8/578; Mizan, 17/220.
[3] Nemuneh, 19/326.
[4] Psalms 80:6.