ذَٰلِكَ مِنْ أَنۢبَآءِ ٱلْقُرَىٰ نَقُصُّهُۥ عَلَيْكَ مِنْهَا قَآئِمٌ وَحَصِيدٌ
"These are among the tidings of the towns that We relate to you. Of them some are still standing and some are cut down."
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the agricultural sense of the word: the verse sums up the peoples that were destroyed with the image of a field — some still standing, some cut off at the root. And the image of the field implies that a reaping is not an end but a harvest; what is sown is reaped.
The same root was treated at al-Kahf 18/45 (fa-aṣbaḥa hashīman tadhrūhu'l-riyāḥ) in a similar scene; I rely on that treatment.
The same sentence is repeated in the Qurʾān and was treated at al-Naḥl 16/33 and al-Zukhruf 43/76.
فَمَآ أَغْنَتْ عَنْهُمْ ءَالِهَتُهُمُ ٱلَّتِى يَدْعُونَ مِن دُونِ ٱللَّهِ مِن شَىْءٍ — and the verb aghnat is worth recording: at 68 and 95 the sūra had said ka-an lam yaghnaw fīhā ("as though they had never dwelt there"). The same root (غ-ن-ي), here in the sense of "to avail".
Tatbīb (ت-ب-ب): destruction, ruin. The root was treated at al-Masad 111/1 (tabbat yadā Abī Lahab). wa mā zādūhum ghayra tatbīb — "they added nothing to them but ruin".
I record this as an observation about the language: the verse says zādūhum (they added). What increases, that is, is not the expected benefit but the harm — the verb is positive, its object negative.
The root akhdh (أ-خ-ذ) comes twice in the sentence: as a noun and as a verb. And a qualification is set down: wa hiya ẓālima — "while it is doing wrong". The seizing, that is, is attached to a condition; not to an identity.
This qualification is the textual counterpart of the method's clause "it is the attributes the verse describes", and the sūra will say it once more fifteen verses later (11/117: wa mā kāna rabbuka li-yuhlika'l-qurā bi-ẓulmin wa ahluhā muṣliḥūn).
The condition must be recorded: li-man khāfa — "for one who fears". What is told, that is, becomes a sign not for everyone but for one who has a certain turning.
ذَٰلِكَ يَوْمٌ مَّجْمُوعٌ لَّهُ ٱلنَّاسُ وَذَٰلِكَ يَوْمٌ مَّشْهُودٌ — two passive participles one after the other: majmūʿ (gathered for) and mashhūd (witnessed). And at 98-99 too two passive participles had come one after the other (mawrūd, marfūd). This section of the sūra keeps up the pattern.
وَمَا نُؤَخِّرُهُۥٓ إِلَّا لِأَجَلٍ مَّعْدُودٍ (104) — ajalun maʿdūd: a numbered term. The deferral is not indefiniteness; the number is known — only the side that knows it changes.