كَذَّبَتْ ثَمُودُ وَعَادٌ بِالْقَارِعَةِ (4)
(69:4) The Thamud *3 and the Ad denied the (possibility of a) sudden calamity, *4 calling it false.
*3) As the disbelievers of Makkah denied Resurrection and took the news of its coming lightly, they have been warned at the outset, as if to say: "Resurrection is inevitable: whether you believe in it; or not, it will in any case take place. Then, they are told: "It is not a simple and ordinary thing that a person accepts the news of the coming of an event, or not, but it has a deep relationship with the morals of the nations and with their future. The history of the nations, which lived before you, testifies that the nation which refused to believe in the Hereafter and thought this worldly life only to be the real life and denied that man would have ultimately to render an account of his deeds before God, corrupted itself morally until the punishment of God overtook it and eliminated it from the world. "
*4) The word al-qari ah is derived from qar', which means to hammer, to beat, to knock and to strike one thing upon the other. This other word for Resurrection has been used to give an idea of its terror and dread.