وَقَالُوٓا۟ أَءِذَا ضَلَلْنَا فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ أَءِنَّا لَفِى خَلْقٍ جَدِيدٍۭ بَلْ هُم بِلِقَآءِ رَبِّهِمْ كَٰفِرُونَ · قُلْ يَتَوَفَّىٰكُم مَّلَكُ ٱلْمَوْتِ ٱلَّذِى وُكِّلَ بِكُمْ ثُمَّ إِلَىٰ رَبِّكُمْ تُرْجَعُونَ
Wa qālū a-idhā ḍalalnā fi'l-arḍi a-innā la-fī khalqin jadīd, bal hum bi-liqāʾi rabbihim kāfirūn · Qul yatawaffākum malaku'l-mawti'lladhī wukkila bikum thumma ilā rabbikum turjaʿūn
"They said: 'When we have been lost in the earth, shall we really be in a new creation?' The truth is that they deny the meeting with their Lord. Say: 'The angel of death, who has been given charge of you, will take your souls; then you will be returned to your Lord.'"
ضَلَّ — root ض-ل-ل: to lose the way; and to be lost inside something and become impossible to tell apart. The "going astray" branch of the root has been treated in many places in the series — it was analysed in al-Fātiḥa (wa la'l-ḍāllīn) and in al-Najm 53/2 (mā ḍalla ṣāḥibukum). I do not repeat it here.
The branch here is the other one, and it must be recorded: ḍalla'l-shayʾu fi'l-shayʾ — one thing was lost, mingled away, became impossible to pick out inside another. The lexicographers record this use separately: like water lost in milk.
I record this as an observation: the objection is built not as "after we die" but as "after we have mingled with the soil and become impossible to tell apart". That is, what the other side finds hard is not death but inseparability. If the parts have mingled with one another, which is the one that will be brought back?
And the answer the verse gives is given not to this question but in the question's place: bal hum bi-liqāʾi rabbihim kāfirūn — "this is not the real matter: they deny the meeting."
I record this as my own reading; its ground is the particle bal: bal cancels what precedes and puts something in its place. The verse does not accept the technical objection as a ground; it names the refusal that lies beneath the objection. This is the line treated all along the axis of al-Jāthiya — there too the ground of the claim was asked for.
And the word liqāʾ must be recorded: it will occur twice in the sūra — here (10) and in the twenty-third verse (fa-lā takun fī miryatin min liqāʾih). The same word: one denied, the other closed off to doubt.
وُكِّلَ — root و-ك-ل: to commit an affair to another, to appoint someone to a task. The verb is passive and Form II: "he was made deputy, he was charged".
The choice of the word is worth recording, and I give it as an observation: the angel of death is named here not as an independent power but as one charged with a task. That the verb comes passive means the one who charged him is not stated in the sentence — but the continuation of the sentence states him anyway: thumma ilā rabbikum turjaʿūn.
And the word order sets up a sequence: yatawaffākum (he takes your souls) → turjaʿūn (you are returned). Both verbs stand in a position close to the passive: the subject of the first is one under orders, that of the second is not stated. That is, at no stage of the process is any disposal of man's own named.
A note per the method (Method): about the name, the number and the manner of the angel of death I write nothing beyond what the text states. The limit laid down about the angels in Fāṭir 35/1 holds here too; I rely on that treatment.