Tafsir at-Tabari: Jami' al-Bayan - Dar al-Tarbiyah wa al-Turath Edition

and left them in darknesses [so] they do not see}—contained an indication of what was omitted that was sufficient to render its explicit mention unnecessary, He abbreviated the speech seeking conciseness.

Likewise, what was omitted and abbreviated from the report concerning the parable of the hypocrites after it is analogous to what was abbreviated from the report concerning the parable of the one who kindled a fire. Because the meaning of the statement is: likewise the hypocrites, Allah took away their light and left them in darknesses [so] they do not see—after the light they were in during the worldly life by virtue of what they used to display with their tongues of affirmation of Islam while concealing other than it—just as the light of the fire of this kindle-seeker went away through the extinguishing and dying out of his fire, so he remained in darkness unable to see.

And the "hāʾ" and "mīm" in His statement, {Allah took away their light}, refer back to the "hāʾ" and "mīm" in His statement, {their parable}.

The discourse regarding the interpretation of the statement of Allah: {[They are] deaf, dumb, and blind, so they will not return (18)}

Abū Jaʿfar said: Since the interpretation of the statement of Allah, majestic be His praise, {Allah took away their light and left them in darknesses [so] they do not see} is what we have described—that it is a report from Allah, majestic be His praise, regarding what He will do with the hypocrites in the Hereafter when tearing away their coverings, exposing the ignominies of their secrets, and stripping them of the radiance of their lights, by leaving them wavering in the darknesses of the terrors of the Day of Resurrection, seeing nothing in its deep pitch-blackness—it is clear that His statement, majestic be His praise, {[They are] deaf, dumb, and blind, so they will not return}, is of the deferred whose meaning is placed forward, and that the meaning of the statement is: Those are they who bought error for guidance, so their transaction did not profit, nor were they guided; [they are] deaf, dumb, and blind, so they will not return; their parable is like the parable of one who kindled a fire, but when it illuminated what was around him, Allah took away their light and left them in darknesses [so] they do not see; or like a rainstorm from the sky.

And since that is the meaning of the statement, it is known that His statement, {[They are] deaf, dumb, and blind}, can take the nominative case in two ways, and the accusative case in two ways:

As for one of the two aspects of the nominative case: it is by way of a new commencement, due to the censure contained in it. The Arabs often do that in praise and censure, using accusative and nominative even if it is a predicate describing a definite noun, as the poet said:

May my people not perish, those who are ... the poison of enemies and the bane of slaughtered camels (1) Who settle in every battlefield ... and whose waist-wrap knots are wholesome (2)

(1) The poetry is by al-Kharnaq bint Badr ibn Haffān, the maternal sister of Ṭarafa—their mother being Warda. Her Dīwān: 10. She elegizes her husband, Bishr ibn ʿAmr ibn Marthad. It will come in the tafsir of the verse in Sūrat Ghāfir: 3 (24: 27 Būlāq), and in Sībawayh 1: 104, 246, 249, and Khizānat al-Adab 2: 301. Her statement "May my people not perish": i.e., may my people not be destroyed; she supplicates for them. Its verb is baʿida yabʿadu baʿadan (from the pattern of fariḥa): perished. Al-ʿudāt is the plural of ʿādin, which means enemy. Al-juzur is the plural of jazūr: the camel that is slaughtered. And "the bane of camels" means the cause of their destruction; they do not spare their wealth out of generosity.
(2) Al-muʿtarak: the place of fighting where they clash, grinding one another down. When the battlefield narrows, the horsemen dismount, thrusting at each other and drawing close until they embrace one another when the fight intensifies. Al-uzur is the plural of izār: that which covers the lower half [of the body], while the ridāʾ is that which covers the upper half. Maʿāqid al-uzur: where it is tied so it does not fall off. She alluded by this to their chastity and purity, that they do not approach an indecency such that they would untie the knots of their waist-wraps.

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