أَفَمَن زُيِّنَ لَهُۥ سُوٓءُ عَمَلِهِۦ فَرَءَاهُ حَسَنًا … فَلَا تَذْهَبْ نَفْسُكَ عَلَيْهِمْ حَسَرَٰتٍ · وَٱللَّهُ ٱلَّذِىٓ أَرْسَلَ ٱلرِّيَٰحَ فَتُثِيرُ سَحَابًا فَسُقْنَٰهُ إِلَىٰ بَلَدٍ مَّيِّتٍ
"The one whose evil deed is made to seem fair to him, so that he sees it as good… Do not let your soul waste itself away in grief over them. It is God who sends the winds, and they raise up a cloud, and We drive it to a dead land…"
The verb is passive, and this is a pattern recorded in several places in this commentary. The same verb occurred in the same pattern in Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin) at 40/37 (wa kadhālika zuyyina li-Firʿawna sūʾu ʿamalih); I rely on that treatment.
And the state the verse describes is worth recording: the person does what is evil and sees it as good. That is: there is no conflict of conscience here — the mechanism of evaluation has itself slipped.
The root ح-س-ر was treated in al-Zumar at 39/56 (to strip off what lies over a thing and lay it bare; from this, weariness and regret). I do not repeat it here.
That the sentence draws a limit must be recorded — and this limit will be repeated several times through the sūra (18, 23, 42). The same limit was treated in al-Zumar at 39/41 (wa mā anta ʿalayhim bi-wakīl) and in al-Aḥqāf at 46/35 (balāgh).
أ-ث-ر / ث-و-ر — ithāra: to raise up, to send into the air, to lift from the ground and scatter. The lexicographers record the word's connection with turning up the soil (thawr — the ox).
And the tense of the verbs changes: arsala (perfect) → tuthīru (imperfect) → suqnāhu (perfect) → fa-aḥyaynā (perfect).
I record this as an observation about the word order: the middle verb comes in the imperfect and so brings a movement still under way before the eye; what comes before it and after it is given with completed verbs. That is: while it relates the rising of the cloud, the sentence changes tempo.
كَذَٰلِكَ ٱلنُّشُورُ — "so too is the resurrection." The proof is set up in the ninth verse of the sūra, still within the first block, and it is the same structure as the one treated in Qāf at 50/11 (kadhālika'l-khurūj): a passage from an event that is seen to an event that is not seen.