Overall meaning : As for him who says to his parents when they call him to believe in Allah and the Last Day, ‘Fie on you both! Do you threaten me that I will be brought back to life when many generations have passed away before me, and none of them has returned?!’
His parents implore Allah’s assistance to help guide him to the truth, and say to their son, ‘Woe betide you! Believe in resurrection after death. Allah’s promise to raise the dead is true beyond a shadow of doubt.’ But he replies, ‘All this is nothing but fables of the ancients!’
It is such people—who deny the resurrection and are undutiful to their parents—on whom Allah’s sentence of punishment has justly been passed, among the bygone unbelieving nations of the jinn and humans. They will truly be losers for their choosing unbelief in preference to faith. Each of these two groups—the believers who honour their parents and the unbelievers who disobey theirs—will be assigned grades by Allah on the Day of Resurrection, according to the good or evil deeds they have done in this world. He will repay them in full for their actions, and they will not be wronged in the least.
Mention to the people, Muhammad, the day when the unbelievers will be brought before the Fire. They will be reprovingly told, ‘You exhausted your share of the good things Allah bestowed upon you in your worldly life and fully enjoyed them without any thought of sparing anything of them for the hereafter. Therefore, today you will suffer a humiliating punishment because you acted with arrogance and injustice in the land and disobeyed Allah!’