Al Shu‘arā’

فَيَقُولُوا هَلْ نَحْنُ مُنظَرُونَ

أَفَبِعَذَابِنَا يَسْتَعْجِلُونَ

أَفَرَأَيْتَ إِن مَّتَّعْنَاهُمْ سِنِينَ

ثُمَّ جَاءهُم مَّا كَانُوا يُوعَدُونَ

203. “Then they will say: ‘Shall we be respited?’”
204. “Do they then ask for Our Chastisement to be hastened on?”
205. “Have you then considered if We let them enjoy themselves for years,”
206. “Then there comes to them that (punishment) which they were promised?”

Allah’s respite must not be the cause of our pride and heedlessness, because death and Divine punishment comes all of a sudden:

Those who haste to see the Divine punishment, there will come a day when they will ask for respite concerning it. But respite will not avail the wrong doers and the black-earted ones. As soon as death seizes the criminals, their sigh and regret begins and they wish to return to this world. Their cries and unaccepted invocations will be useless in this regard. There are many verses in the Qur’an which reflect this fact, the simplest of them can be recited in these verses.

The Qur’an announces:

This statement points to this fact that they had repeatedly asked their prophets derisively that they would bring the chastisement they had promised them, but when they are afflicted with it, they ask for respite to amend their past. Once they imagined that all of these and Divine punishment was a joke, but later they found that it was more earnest than the earnest. The verse says:

However, Allah’s way of treatment is that He will not punish any nation unless He completes the argument and gives them enough respite. But, when the statements were completed and they enjoyed sufficient respite and they did not follow the truth, then they would have a chastisement that they cannot escape of or return from. The verse says: