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fa-kadhdhabūhu fa-ʾakhadhahum ʿadhābu yawmi ẓ-ẓullati ʾinnahū kāna ʿadhāba yawmin ʿaẓīmin
So they impugned him, and then they were overtaken by the punishment of the day of the overshadowing cloud. It was indeed the punishment of a terrible day.
— Ali Quli Qarai
Surah Ash-Shu‘ara - Verses 187-191
187. “Therefore cause a piece of the sky to fall on us, if you are one of the truthful.”
188. “He (Shu‘ayb) said: ‘My Lord knows best what you do’.”
189. “But they belied him, then there seized them the chastisement of the Day of Shadow. Verily it was a chastisement of a grievous day.”
190. “Verily there is a sign in this, but most of them do not believe.”
191. “And verily your Lord, certainly He is the Mighty, the Merciful.”
The Arabic word /kisaf/, which has been repeated for four times in the Qur’an, is the plural form of the word /kisafah/ in the sense of ‘a piece’ and here it means: ‘a piece of cloud’. The purpose of /‘aǒaba yaum iz zullah/ (the chastisement of the Day of Shadow) is either the chastisement of the day when people sheltered under the shadow of the trees because of the severity of heat, or on a day a piece of cloud caused a shadow over them. There are mentioned a few different sentences in the holy Qur’an concerning the chastisement of the people of Shu‘ayb mentioned. Once it says it was an earthquake.4 In another place it says they were punished by a (heavenly) blast.5
Here, in this verse it speaks about a piece of cloud. All the three subjects can combine with together.A piece of dark cloud may produce a thunder and a blast which causes them to tremble, or by creating an earthquake simultaneously, they might be destroyed. Or perhaps the earthquake relates to the people of Madyan and the dark cloud relates to the people of ’Aykah, since Shu‘ayb had been the prophet appointed for both of them. In Surah Al-’A‘raf, his messengership over the people of Madyan, who were destroyed by earthquake, is mentioned, while in this Surah his messengership over the people of ’Aykah is referred to.
However, after saying some contradictory statements that they sometimes called him a liar by which they meant he intended to be superior over them, and sometimes called him mad, their last word was as follows:
They wanted to say that he would send the chastisement by which he threatened them so that he could understand that they might not afraid of those threats. The only answer that Shu‘ayb (as) gave them for those inconvenient statements and their indecent words and that they asked for Divine punishment, was as follows:
Shu‘ayb implicitly says that Allah knows best of what you deserve, whenever He finds that you deserve for a chastisement, he may send it down over you. At last, the time of wiping the earth from these polluted ones came, and as the Qur’an says:
For seven days a blazing heat overtook their land and there existed no wind at all. Suddenly a piece of cloud appeared in the sky, and there blew a breeze. They hastily came out from their own houses and, since they were uncomfortable because of heat, they went under the shadow of the cloud. At this time a fatal thunderbolt was created by the cloud. It was a thunderbolt accompanied with a very loud sound that followed by falling fire over them, and simultaneously an earthquake shook the earth when all of them were annihilated.
At the end of this story, the Qur’an reiterates the same things that were said at the end of the former six stories of the great prophets. The verse implies that there is a sign and an instructive lesson in the story of the people of ’Aykah and the kind call of their prophet, Shu‘ayb, and their stubbornnesses, obstinacies and rejections led to their destruction. It says:
Yet, Allah, the Kind, the Merciful, gave respite to them sufficiently in order that they might change their way and improve themselves, but when they deserved punishment, He seized them with His Might. The verse says:
Footnotes