وَمَا يَأْتِيهِم مِّن ذِكْرٍ مِّنَ ٱلرَّحْمَٰنِ مُحْدَثٍ إِلَّا كَانُوا۟ عَنْهُ مُعْرِضِينَ · فَقَدْ كَذَّبُوا۟ فَسَيَأْتِيهِمْ أَنۢبَٰٓؤُا۟ مَا كَانُوا۟ بِهِۦ يَسْتَهْزِءُونَ
Wa mā yaʾtīhim min dhikrin mina'r-raḥmāni muḥdathin illā kānū ʿanhu muʿriḍīn · Fa-qad kadhdhabū fa-sa-yaʾtīhim anbāʾu mā kānū bihi yastahziʾūn
"No new reminder comes to them from the Merciful but that they turn away from it. · So they have denied; and the tidings of what they used to mock will come to them before long."
Root ح-د-ث: to come to be afterwards, to occur. Ḥadīth — what is new, an event, a saying. مُحْدَث — passive participle: brought into being afterwards, newly sent down.
The word is an attribute of dhikr and looks to the moment of revelation: each newly descending portion. The verse therefore recounts not a single event but a repeated reaction: each time a new one comes, the same thing happens.
It is known that this word has been drawn into the debate in the history of theology over whether the Qurʾān is "created". In this commentary I do not enter that debate; the context of the verse is the newness of the revelation, not a dispute about being. I record this as a limitation, not as a view.
The name was analysed in detail in al-Raḥmān and is not repeated.
What is to be added here is an observation about the structure: the name set opposite the act of turning away is not al-Qahhār or al-Jabbār but al-Raḥmān. What is turned away from is therefore presented not as a threat but as a mercy. The same technique was recorded at Yāsīn 36/11 and al-Zukhruf 43/36.
سَ (sīn) announces the near future in Arabic. For the distant future sawfa is used. Not "one day", then, but "before long".
أَنۢبَآء — the plural of nabaʾ; root ن-ب-أ: a great and weighty piece of news. The root was analysed in al-Nabaʾ. Ordinary news is called khabar; weighty news, nabaʾ.
And the point of word order is this: what is to come is not the punishment but the tidings. Anbāʾu mā kānū bihi yastahziʾūn — "the tidings of what they used to mock". When the thing mocked comes about, then, it no longer arrives as tidings but as event. This expression is repeated in the Qurʾān: wa ḥāqa bihim mā kānū bihi yastahziʾūn (al-Anʿām 6/10; Hūd 11/8).