أُو۟لَٰٓئِكَ ٱلَّذِينَ حَقَّ عَلَيْهِمُ ٱلْقَوْلُ فِىٓ أُمَمٍ قَدْ خَلَتْ مِن قَبْلِهِم مِّنَ ٱلْجِنِّ وَٱلْإِنسِ
"These are the ones against whom the word has been fulfilled, among communities of jinn and of men that had passed away before them."
حَقَّ عَلَيْهِمُ ٱلْقَوْلُ — "the word became due against them." The root ح-ق-ق: to be fixed, to settle into place. That is, the verdict given has found its place in their case.
فِىٓ أُمَمٍ قَدْ خَلَتْ — and the person is not named on his own: he is placed inside the communities that passed away before him.
This turns back upon itself the evidence of the portrait in the seventeenth verse. There the man had said qad khalati'l-qurūnu min qablī — "many generations passed before me, and none came back." The verse takes the same expression (qad khalat) and ties it somewhere else: those who have passed away are not an item of evidence but a line the person himself belongs to.
This is a repetition that can be verified within the sūra — and, one verse apart, two opposed uses of the same verbal root.
مِّنَ ٱلْجِنِّ وَٱلْإِنسِ — and the communities are named from the two kinds. In the fourth block of the sūra (29-32) the listening of a group of jinn, and their turning back, will be related. What is seen when the two verses are read together is this: the same two kinds occur in one place as those held responsible, in another as the first to recognise.