Overall meaning : Allah, Exalted and Sublime be He, urges the believers to leave their homeland for the sake of their religion and explains that their emigration will not affect their livelihood in any way and that the sustenance He has decreed for them will not go to waste: Countless are the living creatures that do not gather, carry or store their sustenance for the future. Allah provides for them as He provides for you, emigrants, even if you have no means of sustenance. Do not, therefore, fear poverty. He hears every statement and knows every action.
Then He calls attention to the manifest contradiction in the idolaters’ position and concepts: If you ask them, Muhammad who it is that has created the heavens and the earth and made the sun and the moon subservient to His laws and for their own benefit, they will surely say, ‘Allah alone has created them all.’ How can they, then, turn away from declaring Allah’s oneness and worship Him alone after the proof has been established?!
He then stresses He alone provides all sustenance: Allah gives abundantly to whomever He wills and sparingly to whomever He pleases. Allah has full knowledge of all things. And if you ask them who it is that sends down rain from the heavens and revives with it the earth after it has been arid and lifeless, they will surely say, ‘Allah alone does all that.’ Say, ‘Praise, then, be to Allah for having sent proofs and cogent arguments and has made His blessings available! In fact, most of them do not use their intellect!
Next, He shows the true reality of this worldly life in comparison with the life to come: the life of this world is nothing but amusement and play, in addition to being transitory, whereas Paradise is the true life that will last for all eternity. Were the idolaters to know this, they would surely believe in Allah alone and would not give precedence to this fleeting life over the everlasting life hereafter!