Overall meaning : Allah Almighty states that He gave Moses, peace be upon him, the Torah and sent a succession of messengers to the Children of Israel after him, that He gave Jesus, peace be upon him, miracles attesting to his truthfulness and proving his prophethood and that He strengthened and aided him with Gabriel, peace be upon him.
Then He vehemently condemns what the Children of Israel did whenever any of His messengers was sent to them: every time a messenger came to them with laws that did not suit their own desires, they arrogantly rejected him, accusing some of imposture and killing others.
Furthermore, they falsely and proudly claim that the reason for their unbelief is that Allah has ‘wrapped their hearts up in covers’, and so they are unable to understand. The truth is by no means what they wrongly claim. The fact of the matter is, Allah Almighty has excluded them from His mercy and grace for rejecting His signs and accusing His messengers of lying. They only accept a little of what they have to believe in.
And when the Qur’an, which evidently confirms what is in the Torah, came to the Jews, they rejected it: whenever a battle between them and the Arab idolaters broke before the advent of Allah’s Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, they would threateningly say to the Arab idolaters that the time of the final prophet mentioned in their book had approached and that they would follow him and under his leadership they would deal the Arab idolaters a crushing defeat. However, when he came and they readily recognised him, they purposely chose to reject him, and thus became deserving of being expelled from Allah’s grace and mercy.
Evil indeed is what they have chosen for themselves! They have preferred unbelief to true faith and have chosen to be doomed to Hellfire all because of envy. They envied the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, because he was not one of the descendants of Israel. They have justly incurred Allah’s wrath for denying Prophet Muhammad’s message, in addition to Allah’s wrath they had previously incurred because of the grave sins they had committed before. Those who deny the prophethood of Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, will surely suffer a humiliating punishment.