وَمَا جَعَلْنَٰهُمْ جَسَدًا لَّا يَأْكُلُونَ ٱلطَّعَامَ وَمَا كَانُوا۟ خَٰلِدِينَ · ثُمَّ صَدَقْنَٰهُمُ ٱلْوَعْدَ فَأَنجَيْنَٰهُمْ وَمَن نَّشَآءُ وَأَهْلَكْنَا ٱلْمُسْرِفِينَ
Wa mā jaʿalnāhum jasadan lā yaʾkulūna'ṭ-ṭaʿāma wa mā kānū khālidīn · Thumma ṣadaqnāhumu'l-waʿda fa-anjaynāhum wa man nashāʾu wa ahlakna'l-musrifīn
"We did not make them bodies that eat no food, nor were they deathless. · Then We made the promise true to them: We delivered them and whom We willed, and destroyed those who went to excess."
The word is singular (jasadan), though the pronoun is plural (jaʿalnāhum). The grammarians explain this as a generic noun: "of the kind of body" — it conveys no number.
Jasad — the root ج-س-د. The lexicographers record a distinction between jasad and jism: jasad is used of a body showing no sign of life — as the Qurʾān has ʿijlan jasadan lahu khuwār of the calf (al-Aʿrāf 7/148; Ṭāhā 20/88). That is, the choice of the word hints that what the objection wanted was a lifeless appearance.
I record this as an observation about the word; I do not claim that the verse builds a ruling upon the hint.
وَمَا كَانُوا۟ خَٰلِدِينَ — and the second negation. This sentence looks at exactly the same matter as the thirty-fourth verse of the sūra: wa mā jaʿalnā li-basharin min qablika'l-khuld. There are twenty-six verses between the two, and both say the same thing. It is a repetition that can be verified within the sūra.
Ṣadaqnā — Form I, not Form II, taking two objects: "we made the promise true to them". The root ص-د-ق: a word's conforming to fact.
And a point of word order must be recorded: the sentence does not say "we kept our word". Ṣadaqnāhumu'l-waʿd — "we made the promise true to them". That is, what is made true is the word, and who is made true is the messenger.
وَمَن نَّشَآءُ — a further group is added to those delivered, and it is not named. The verse does not name it; nor do I.
ٱلْمُسْرِفِينَ — root س-ر-ف: to overstep the bound, to go past the measure. And the choice of the word is worth recording: those destroyed are named not as kāfirūn or mushrikūn but as those who overstep the measure. The scene of the balance that will be set up in the forty-seventh verse of the sūra is the other face of the same notion. I record this as my own reading.