The Quran

وَبَرَزوا لِلَّهِ جَميعًا فَقالَ الضُّعَفاءُ لِلَّذينَ استَكبَروا إِنّا كُنّا لَكُم تَبَعًا فَهَل أَنتُم مُغنونَ عَنّا مِن عَذابِ اللَّهِ مِن شَيءٍ ۚ قالوا لَو هَدانَا اللَّهُ لَهَدَيناكُم ۖ سَواءٌ عَلَينا أَجَزِعنا أَم صَبَرنا ما لَنا مِن مَحيصٍ

Muhammad Asad

And all [mankind] will appear before God [on the Day of Judgment]; and then the weak¹ will say unto those who had gloried in their arrogance: "Behold, We were but your followers: can you, then, relieve us of something of God's chastisement?" [And the others] will answer: "If God would but show us the way [to salvation], we would indeed guide you [towards it].² It is [now] all one, as far as we are concerned, whether we grieve impatiently or endure [our lot] with patience: there is no escape for us!"

I.e., those who had sinned out of moral weakness and self-indulgence, relying on the supposedly superior wisdom of the so-called "leaders of thought", who are described in the sequence as having "gloried in their arrogance" (astakbaru) inasmuch as they refused to pay heed to God's messages (Tabari, on the authority of Ibn 'Abbas).
Sc., "but now it is too late for repentance". According to Tabari and Razi, this is the meaning of the above passage. Zamakhshari, however, prefers another interpretation, implying a reference not to the present but to the past, thus: "'If God had guided us aright, we would have guided you [too] aright": in other words, he understands the phrase as an attempt on the part of the doomed to divest themselves of all responsibility, and to attribute their past sinning to God's "not having willed" to guide them aright. To my mind, the interpretation offered by Tabari and Razi is preferable because - all other considerations apart - it provides a logical connection between the request of "the weak" (see preceding note) and the reply of those who in their earthly life had "gloried in their arrogance", as well as with the latters' subsequent, despairing utterance, which can be summed up in the words, "too late!"