Overall meaning : The Almighty says: Do they not reflect upon themselves to realise that Allah alone has created the heavens and the earth and all that lies between them for a wise purpose and not in vain, for a fixed term known only to Him, at the conclusion of which they will perish on Resurrection Day? Yet many people do not believe in life after death and deny they will ever meet their Lord.
Have these deniers of life after death not journeyed through the land to see the final fate of the unbelieving nations before them so that they would reflect and take heed?! Those who had come before them were far mightier than them, cultivated the land more and developed it more than these have ever developed it. Their messengers also came to them with clear proofs, but they denied them, and so Allah meted His punishment to them.
Allah would never wrong them for destroying them before first sending messengers to them and establishing proof against them, but they wronged themselves through their disbelief and rejection of the truth. Then the fate of those who had done wrong was the punishment that Allah inflicted on them because they denied and ridiculed Allah’s signs.