Tabari, for example, often presents numerous potential interpretations of verses that are contradictory.
An example, from GS Reynolds - The Quran and its Biblical Subtext:
This is only one of many explanations that Tabari considers. According to the first explanation Abraham’s wife laughed when she saw that his guests did not eat.239 According to the second explanation, she laughed when she heard that the angels were to destroy the people of Lot, “pleased that God’s punishment had come upon a heedless people.”240 According to the third explanation (stated with a circumlocution for modesty’s sake), she laughed when she realized that the visitors would not do to them that which Lot’s people were known to do. The fourth explanation is that of Tafsir MuqAtil, that she laughed when she saw Abraham’s fear of the messengers.
According to the fifth explanation Abraham’s wife laughed when she received the good news of Isaac and Jacob, that is, she laughed with joy because of the miracle granted to her. pabarc immediately notes that this explanation contradicts the word order of the Qur’an.241 There is, he notes, a philological device (SCla) that could solve this diffculty, namely taqir al- muqaddam: understanding later that which appears earlier. Tabari, however, declares his preference to avoid using such devices.
The sixth explanation is that of Qummc, that she did not laugh at all but rather menstruated (SARat). Tabari is likewise suspicious of this creative interpretation, noting that the grammarians of Kefa reject entirely this second-ary meaning for RaSikat.242 Finally, according to the seventh explanation Abraham’s wife laughed when she heard that the angels were to destroy the people of Lot, out of relief that her own family was going to be safe.
Tabari favors the explanation that Abraham’s wife laughed out of satisfaction that Lot’s people would be destroyed (the second view above).243 This is the best explanation, Tabari remarks, since the last phrase in the Qur’an before RaSikat (i.e. at the end of Q 11.70) is “Do not fear. We have been sent to the people of Lot.” Tabari concludes: “Thus the laughter and amazement can only have been due to the affair of Lot’s people.” ...
Nevertheless there are signs in hud that the Qur’an is in conversation with the Biblical account that has Sarah laugh when she hears the news of Isaac. To begin with, the Qur’an follows quite closely here the sequence of the Biblical account: from the visitation to Abraham (Gn 18.1–16; Q 11.69–73), to Abraham’s plea for Lot’s people (Gn 18.17–33; Q 11.74–6), to the destruction of Lot’s people (Gn 19.1–29; Q 11.77–83). In doing so, however, the Qur’an neither reproduces the Biblical account in full nor provides an alternative account. Instead the Qur’an develops its own homily, or religious exhortation, using references to the Biblical story along the way. This suggests that the Qur’an assumes that its audience is already familiar with this story.
Thus it is perfectly reasonable for the Qur’an to allude to the laughter of Sarah without a detailed explanation thereof. It is also reasonable for the Qur’an (in Q 11.71) to mention that laughter before the annunciation of Isaac’s birth, and to expect the reader nevertheless to understand that the annunciation came first (as Tabari puts it, through ta”khCr al-muqaddam). In fact, the Qur’an has a perfectly good literary reason for doing so. For here as elsewhere the Qur’an follows a rhyme scheme [and reversing the order is necessary to maintain this]
