while ṭughyān [which has the meaning of overflowing and exceeding all bounds] indicates that their harm has inundated everything good like a flood, destroying the foundations of perfection, and that nothing remains but black scum.
So they will wander like blind ones [to and fro] (ya‘mahūn): that is, they are bewildered and hesitant. This indicates that they have no beliefs and no fixed goal.
These are the people who have purchased error at the price of guidance, but their trade is profitless, and they are not rightly‑guided. (Ūlā’ika alladhīna ishtaraw al‑ḍalālata bi’l-hudā fa-mā rabiḥat tijāratuhum wa mā kānū muhtadīn)
The Verse’s Positioning with Regard to What Precedes It
Consider this: This verse is a summary of the preceding detailed descriptions, illustrating them in elevated and effective fashion. Commerce is chosen as the parable’s [subject] because the first people it was addressing had experienced the pleasures and hardships of trade on their journeys of winter and summer. The verse’s pertinence is this:
Human beings were not sent to this world to make it their homeland, but to trade using the capital of their innate faculties and powers; to cultivate them and then dispose freely of their produce.
The Positioning of the Verse’s Phrases
This is a fluent, natural arrangement, reflecting the ordering of the parable. It is like this:
There was a cheated failed merchant. He had been given rich capital but he had used it only to buy poison and things harmful to himself. He worked his capital, but it brought him no profit and was of no avail to him; indeed, it plunged him into ever greater loss. Finally he lost all of it, and then strayed from the path until there was no return.
The Positioning of the Parts of the Phrases
The demonstrative pronoun These (Ūlā’ika) brings near what is tangible and distant.
This suggests that on hearing the crimes enumerated in the above verses, the listener feels in his heart a gradually increasing anger and disgust, so wants to see the dissemblers in order to vent his anger and confront them with his loathing and contempt.
The palpability hints that their being qualified by these extraordinary attributes embodies them in the [listener’s] mind, making them [almost] tangible to [his] imagination. It also indicates the reason for the statement, since sin leads to further sin. [For certainly a reason is necessary if one exchanges misguidance for guidance, and this is their above‑mentioned crimes and attributes. Thus, the Qur’an alludes to them with These (Ūlā’ika), that is, those qualified by those attributes, so that the listener will know the reason for the condemnation of them in this verse.]
As for the distance signified by These (Ūlā’ika), it indicates their great distance from the right path:
They have reached the point of no return; they departed of their own accord, but they cannot return. The relative pronoun who (alladhīna) indicates that this sort of commerce is strange and injurious. Only recently had it appeared and become a principle and course of action adopted by people. For as mentioned above, the relative pronoun indicates new facts that are just being established.
The verb have purchased (ishtaraw) alludes to the rejection of their excuse [when they say] “it is in our natures to do this.” It is as though the Qur’an is saying to them: “No! Allah has given you your lifespan as capital, and deposited in your spirits the potentiality to mature and be perfected, and planted in your consciences the seeds of truth, which constitute innate guidance, so that you might buy happiness. But rather than buying it, indeed renouncing it, you procured immediate pleasures and worldly benefits, and misusing your wills you chose the way of misguidance rather than the path of guidance, and you spoiled that innate guidance and lost your capital.
The phrase error [at the price of] guidance (al‑ḍalālata bi’l-hudā) hints that they incur loss upon loss, for just as they lose by acquiring misguidance, so they lose through giving up the supreme bounty of guidance.
But their trade is profitless (fa‑mā rabiḥat tijāratuhum):
The use of the negative – for not only have they incurred a loss but have lost all their capital – suggests that
it would have been intelligent not to attempt unprofitable trade, and particularly trade that causes loss and even the loss of one’s capital.
Also, by ascribing the verb to their commerce – although rightly it should have been ascribed to themselves; that is but they gained no profit in their trade (fa‑mā rabiḥū fī tijāratihim) – is a sign that
in no respect, in none of its particulars or conditions or means, does their commerce yield any benefit, unlike in some businesses where no profit is made on the products but some benefits may accrue in other particulars or their services. The dissemblers’ trade is pure evil and undiluted harm. Ascribing the verb to the trade here resembles the saying: Nāma layluhu (his night slept) instead of nāma fi’l‑layl (he slept in the night). The former means that besides himself sleeping, the night was hushed and silent as though sleeping, and nothing disturbed him.
And they are not rightly‑guided (wa mā kānū muhtadīn): That is, just as they have lost their capital, so have have they lost their way. [This is linked and associated with the parabolic] ishtaraw (have purchased), as was the preceding phrase. It also hints obliquely atguidance for those who fear Allah (hudan li’l‑muttaqīn) at the start of the sura. As though it is saying: “The Qur’an offered them guidance, but they did not accept it.”