FajaAAalahum juthathan illa kabeeran lahum laAAallahum ilayhi yarjiAAoona
English
Ahmed Ali
So he smashed them up to pieces with the exception of the biggest, so that they may turn to it.
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Tafseer
'Abdullāh Ibn 'Abbās / Muḥammad al-Fīrūzabādī
تفسير : when they went to their festival and they left abraham behind in their township, he went to the house of their idols. (then he reduced them to fragments) he destroyed them, (all save the chief of them) he left it intact, (that haply they might have recourse to it) after coming back from their festival and he could say that it was it that did it.
Jalāl al-Dīn al-Maḥallī
تفسير : and so, after they had set off to a gathering of theirs on one of their festival days, he reduced them to fragments (read judhādhan or jidhādhan, meaning ‘pieces’), [smashing them] with a hatchet, [all] except the principal one among them, around whose neck he hung the hatchet, that they might return to it, that is, to the principal one, and see what he had done to the others.
