Consider this: there are three aspects to these verses also, that look to the word-order [and positioning and relationships] (naẓmiyya), and the meaning of all them looks to both the preceding verses and the succeeding ones, and to the Qur’an as a whole.
Their positioning in respect of what follows them:
You should be aware that when the Qur’an gives examples of gnats and spiders and speaks of ants and date-palms, the Jews, dissemblers, and idolators see it as an opportunity to oppose [it], and ask foolishly: “Does Allah the Most High – despite His sublimity – condescend to speak of such lowly matters, which the people of excellence disdain even to mention?” So the Qur’an deals them a blow in the mouth with this verse.
Their positioning with regard to with what precedes them:
Through its miraculousness and inimitability the Qur’an proves [Muhammad’s] prophethood; and by challenging [its opponents] it proves its miraculousness and inimitability; and by their silence it proves [the success of] its challenges; and it proves at the start of the sura that it possesses elevated qualities not found together in other speech. [Thus it defeats its opponents who] remain silent in the face of its challenges, with not even their feelings of tribal solidarity being aroused. However, using false arguments they object to one [aspect] of the Qur’an’s perfection, saying that such parables as “their parable is that of people who kindle...”(2:17) and “or [the parable] of a violent cloudburst in the sky...”(2:19) are about commonplace matters and lower the level of the language putting it on a par with the conversation of ordinary people. So the Qur’an raps them on the head with this verse, dazing them.
An explanation of this: their frail doubts arise from a string of delusions, the source of which are a number of fallacies:
The First is a false analogy the source of which is their seeing everything in the mirror of what they are familiar with. For they see a person whose mind is partial, whose thought is partial, whose speech is partial, whose hearing is partial, and who cannot attend to two matters at once, and they know that the criterion for his aspirations is the thing he is preoccupied with and attaches importance to. They consider that worth and greatness are proportionate to ambition and cannot ascribe lowly, inferior matters to a lofty, august person, for they assume that he would not stoop to bothering himself with such things nor go to great lengths concerning paltry matters. With this false view they look to the Necessary One (May He