ثُمَّ بَعَثْنَا مِنۢ بَعْدِهِۦ رُسُلًا إِلَىٰ قَوْمِهِمْ فَجَآءُوهُم بِٱلْبَيِّنَٰتِ فَمَا كَانُوا۟ لِيُؤْمِنُوا۟ بِمَا كَذَّبُوا۟ بِهِۦ مِن قَبْلُ
"Then after him We sent messengers to their own peoples. They brought them clear proofs; but they were not going to believe in what they had denied before. Thus do We set a seal on the hearts of those who overstep the bounds."
The verse repeats the sentence of the thirteenth verse: wa jāʾathum rusuluhum bi'l-bayyināti wa mā kānū li-yuʾminū. It is a repetition that can be verified within the sūra.
| Reading | What it says |
|---|---|
| 1 | The continuation of the first denial — because they denied once, they did not believe afterwards either |
| 2 | What their forefathers denied — what the earlier generations rejected |
| 3 | What they rejected before the messenger came — a stance of refusal held in readiness |
And the common point is worth recording: the verse ties the failure to believe not to the insufficiency of the proof but to a stance taken in advance. And this coincides with the diagnosis of the thirty-ninth verse: they denied what they could not encompass in knowledge.
نَطْبَعُ عَلَىٰ قُلُوبِ ٱلْمُعْتَدِينَ — the root ط-ب-ع: to seal, to stamp. The root was treated in the index (Muḥammad 47/16, al-Jāthiya 45/23); I do not repeat it.
And the word order must be recorded: the hearts that are sealed are the hearts of the muʿtadīn — the root ع-د-و: to overstep the bounds. The seal, that is, comes after a quality; not upon a group with no quality named.