Hizb 21 closes At-Tawba with a contrast between hypocrites still inventing excuses and the sincere emigrants and helpers praised for their sacrifice, and with one of the sura's most personal episodes: three companions who genuinely stayed behind from the expedition without hypocrisy, were shunned by the whole community as a consequence, and were only forgiven once their repentance was formally accepted, an account tradition associates with Kab ibn Malik and two companions named alongside him. The sura closes on a note of tenderness, describing the Prophet as grieved by his people's hardship and full of concern and mercy for the believers.
The hizb then opens Yunus, named for the prophet Jonah, with a defense against the surprise some expressed that a message should come through an ordinary man, and an argument for God's power and for resurrection drawn from natural signs, the sun and moon fixed for reckoning time, rain that revives dead land. It warns against overvaluing this present life, brief as it is against what follows it, and it rebuts the polytheists' claim that intercessors could stand between them and God without His permission.
The hizb closes still within this argument, affirming that the Quran confirms rather than contradicts the scriptures that came before it, a theme Yunus returns to more than once across its own length.