The Thunder
IN THE NAME OF GOD, THE MOST GRACIOUS, THE DISPENSER OF GRACE
[13:5]
BUT IF thou art amazed [at the marvels of God’s creation], amazing, too, is their saying, "What! After we have become dust, shall we indeed be [restored to life] in a new act of creation?"
It is they who [thus show that they] are bent on denying their Sustainer; and it is they who carry the shackles [of their own making] around their necks; and it is they who are destined for the fire, therein to abide.


* v.5 : I.e., while it is amazing that one can refuse to believe in God despite all the evidence, accessible to human observation, of the existence of a definite purpose in all life-phenomena, and thus of the existence of a conscious Creative Power, it is no less amazing to see people who, while vaguely believing in God, can yet refuse to believe in individual resurrection: for, if God has created the universe and the phenomenon of life as such, He obviously has the power to re-create life – and its requisite physical vehicle – in a new act of creation.
* By denying the possibility of resurrection, they implicitly deny God’s almightiness, and thus, in effect, His reality.
* A metaphor of man’s willful self-abandonment to false values and evil ways, and of the resulting enslavement of the spirit (cf. Zamakhsharī, Rāzī, Baydāwī). See also sūrah 34, note 44.