وَقَدْ كَفَرُوا بِهِ مِن قَبْلُ وَيَقْذِفُونَ بِالْغَيْبِ مِن مَّكَانٍ بَعِيدٍ
when they denied it in the past—shooting at something invisible from a far-off place—
Agha Ali Puya Commentary
Commentary on Quran 34:53
[Pooya/Ali Commentary 34:53] The people disbelieved in the Holy Prophet and rejected his message, imagining themselves to be as safe in the hereafter as they were in this world, but they were conjecturing about something unseen and distant. The Quran asserts that they could never understand the reality of the unseen because of its immense distance from them.