Overall meaning : Not equal are those who eagerly and actively seek Allah’s good pleasure and those who fall into sin and disobedience, incur Allah’s wrath and are consequently doomed to Hell—an evil journey’s end! Both groups are on entirely different levels in the sight of Allah. Those who strive after Allah’s good pleasure will have different degrees of highness, and those who have incurred Allah’s wrath of will have different degrees of lowness. Allah is fully aware of everything everyone does, and He will repay them according to their actions.
The Almighty mentions how gracious He has been to the faithful by sending them a human prophet—Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace—to recite to them the Qur’an; purify them and cleanse them of the sin of ascribing partners to Him, misdeeds and abominable acts; and teach them the meanings of the Qur’an and the Sunnah, whereas before that they were in manifest error.
Now addressing the believers, Allah Almighty says: Why is it when a calamity befell you at the Battle of Uhud—by having seventy of you killed— though the enemy had suffered at your hands at the Battle of Badr double what you suffered—by killing seventy of them and taking seventy of them captive—you ask, ‘How could this calamity possibly happen?’ Allah instructs His Prophet Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, to say to them: ‘What happened was because of your own doing, when some of you disputed with one another and disobeyed the Messenger’s orders. Allah has power over all things.’
He then informs the faithful that the defeat they suffered after the Muslim army and the idolaters’ army engaged in the Battle of Uhud was all by His will to mark out the true believers as well as the hypocrites in their midst. The hypocrites showed themselves in their true colours when they were called to fight for the cause of Allah or to defend their own homeland. They gave a flimsy excuse, saying, ‘Had we known there would be a confrontation between the Muslims and the idolaters, we would certainly have joined the Muslims. We thought this would never happen.’ They were on that day nearer to unbelief than they were to faith. Their words belied their intentions, but Allah knows well what they conceal.
The hypocrites who stayed behind instead of going off to war said, ‘Had our relatives who were killed in action followed our advice to them to stay behind, they would not have been killed.’ Whereupon Allah instructs His Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, to say to them: ‘Avert your own death, then, if what you claim is true.’