Then return thy gaze again, and again, and thy gaze comes back to thee dazzled, aweary.
And We adorned the lower heaven with lamps, and made them things to stone Satans; and We have prepared for them the chastisement of the Blaze.
And for those who disbelieve in their Lord there awaits the chastisement of Gehenna -- an evil homecoming!
When they are cast into it they will hear it sighing, the while it boils and wellnigh bursts asunder with rage. As often as a troop is cast into it, its keepers ask them, 'Came there no warner to you?'; They say, 'Yes indeed, a warner came to us; but we cried lies, saying, "God has not sent down anything; you are only in great error.
They also say, 'If we had only heard, or had understood, we would not have been of the inhabitants of the Blaze.'
So they confess their sins. Curse the inhabitants of the Blaze!
Surely those who fear their Lord in the Unseen -- there awaits them forgiveness and a great wage.
Be secret in your speech, or proclaim it, He knows the thoughts within the breasts.
Shall He not know, who created? And He is the All-subtle, the All-aware.
It is He who made the earth submissive to you; therefore walk in its tracts, and eat of His provision; to Him is the Uprising.
Do you feel secure that He who is in heaven will not cause the earth to swallow you, the while it rocks?
Do you feel secure that He who is in heaven will not loose against you a squall of pebbles, then you shall know how My warning is?
Those that were before them also cried lies; then how was My horror!
Have they not regarded the birds above them spreading their wings, and closing them? Naught holds them but the All-merciful. Surely He sees everything.
Or who is this that shall be a host for you to help you, apart from the All-merciful? The unbelievers are only in delusion.
Or who is this that shall provide for you if He withholds His provision? No, but they persist in disdain and aversion.
What, is he who walks prone upon his face better guided than he who walks upright on a straight path?
Say: 'It is He who produced you, and appointed for you hearing and sight and hearts; little thanks you show!'
Say: 'It is He who scattered you in the earth, and unto Him you shall be mustered.'
They say, 'When shall this promise come to pass, if you speak truly?'
Say: 'The knowledge is with God; I am only a clear warner.'
Then, when they see it nigh at hand, the faces of the unbelievers will be vexed, and it will be said, 'This is what you were promised.'
Say: 'What think you? If God destroys me and those with me, or has mercy on us, then who will protect the unbelievers from a painful chastisement?'
Say: 'He is the All-merciful. We believe in Him, and in Him we put all our trust. Assuredly, you will soon, know who is in manifest error.
Say: 'What think you? If in the morning your water should have vanished into the earth, then who would bring you running water?'
Nun. By the Pen, and what they inscribe, thou art not, by the blessing of thy Lord, a man possessed.
Surely thou shalt have a wage unfailing; surely thou art upon a mighty morality.
So thou shalt see, and they will see, which of you is the demented.
Surely thy Lord knows very well those who have gone astray from His way, and He knows very well those who are guided.
So obey thou not those who cry lies.
They wish that thou shouldst compromise, then they would compromise.
And obey thou not every mean swearer, backbiter, going about with slander, hinderer of good, guilty aggressor, coarse-grained, moreover ignoble, because he has wealth and sons.
When Our signs are recited to him, he says, 'Fairy-tales of the ancients!'
We shall brand him upon the muzzle!
Now We have tried them, even as We tried the owners of the garden when they swore they would pluck in the morning and they added not the saving words.
Then a visitation from thy Lord visited it, while they were sleeping, and in the morning it was as if it were a garden plucked.
In the morning they called to one another, 'Come forth betimes upon your tillage, if you would pluck!'
So they departed, whispering together, 'No needy man shall enter it today against your will.'
And they went forth early, determined upon their purpose.
But when they saw it, they said, 'Surely we are gone astray; nay, rather we have been robbed!'
Said the most moderate of them, 'Did I not say to you, "Why do you not give glory?"'
They said, 'Glory be to God, our Lord; truly, we were evildoers.'
And they advanced one upon another, blaming each other.
They said, 'Woe, alas for us! Truly, we were insolent.
It may be that our Lord will give us in exchange a better than it; to our Lord we humbly turn.'
Such is the chastisement; and the chastisement of the world to come, is assuredly greater, did they but know.
Surely for the godfearing shall be Gardens of Bliss with their Lord.
What, shall we make those who have surrendered like to the sinners?
What ails you then, how you judge?
Or have you a Book wherein you study?
Surely therein you shall have whatever you choose!
Or have you oaths from Us, reaching to the Day of Resurrection? Surely you shall have whatever you judge!
Ask them, which of them will guarantee that!
Or do they have associates? Then let them bring their associates, if they speak truly.
Upon the day when the leg shall be bared, and they shall be summoned to bow themselves, but they cannot; humbled shall be their eyes, and abasement shall overspread them, for they had been summoned to bow themselves while they were whole.
So leave Me with him who cries lies to this discourse! We will draw them on little by little whence they know not; and I shall respite them -- assuredly My guile is sure.
Or askest thou them for a wage, and so they are weighed down with debt?
Or is the Unseen in their keeping, and so they are writing it down?
So be thou patient under the judgment of thy Lord, and be not as the Man of the Fish, when he called, choking inwardly.
Had there not overtaken him a blessing from his Lord he would have been cast upon the wilderness, being condemned.
But his Lord had chosen him, and He placed him among the righteous.
The unbelievers wellnigh strike thee down with their glances, when they hear the Reminder, and they say, 'Surely he is a man possessed!'
And it is nothing but a Reminder unto all beings.
The Indubitable!
What is the Indubitable?
And what will teach thee what is the Indubitable?
Thamood and Ad cried lies to the Clatterer.
As for Thamood, they were destroyed by the Screamer; and as for Ad, they were destroyed by a wind clamorous, violent that He compelled against them seven nights and eight days, uninterruptedly, and thou mightest see the people laid prostrate in it as if they were the stumps of fallen down palm-trees.
Now dost thou see any remnant of them?
Pharaoh likewise, and those before him, and the Subverted Cities -- they committed error, and they rebelled against the Messenger of their Lord, and He seized them with a surpassing grip.
Lo, when the waters rose, We bore you in the running ship that We might make it a reminder for you and for heeding ears to hold.
So, when the Trumpet is blown with a single blast and the earth and the mountains are lifted up and crushed with a single blow, then, on that day, the Terror shall come to pass, and heaven shall be split, for upon that day it shall be very frail, and the angels shall stand upon its borders, and upon that day eight shall carry above them the Throne of thy Lord.
On that day you shall be exposed, not one secret of yours concealed.
Then as for him who is given his book in his right hand, he shall say, 'Here, take and read my book!
Certainly I thought that I should encounter my reckoning.'
So he shall be in a pleasing life in a lofty Garden, its clusters nigh to gather.
'Eat and drink with wholesome appetite for that you did long ago, in the days gone by.'
But as for him who is given his book in his left hand, he shall say, 'Would that I had not been given my book and not known my reckoning!
Would it had been the end!
My wealth has not availed me, my authority is gone from me.'
'Take him, and fetter him, and then roast him in Hell, then in a chain of seventy cubits' length insert him!
Behold, he never believed in God the All-mighty, and he never urged the feeding of the needy; therefore he today has not here one loyal friend, neither any food saving foul pus, that none excepting the sinners eat.'
No! I swear by that you see and by that you do not see, it is the speech of a noble Messenger.
It is not the speech of a poet (little do you believe) nor the speech of a soothsayer (little do you remember).
A sending down from the Lord of all Being.
Had he invented against Us any sayings, We would have seized him by the right hand, then We would surely have cut his life-vein and not one of you could have defended him.
Surely it is a Reminder to the godfearing; but We know that some of you will cry lies.
Surely it is a sorrow to the unbelievers; yet indeed it is the truth of certainty.
Then magnify the Name of thy Lord, the All-mighty.
A questioner asked of a chastisement about to fall for the unbelievers, which none may avert, from God, the Lord of the Stairways.
To Him the angels and the Spirit mount up, in a day whereof the measure is fifty thousand years.
So be thou patient with a sweet patience; behold, they see it as if far off; but We see it is nigh.
Upon the day when heaven shall be as molten copper and the mountains shall be as plucked wool-tufts, no loyal friend shall question loyal friend, as they are given sight of them. The sinner will wish that he might ransom himself from the chastisement of that day even by his sons, his companion wife, his brother, his kin who sheltered him, and whosoever is in the earth, all together, so that then it might deliver him.
Nay, verily it is a furnace snatching away the scalp, calling him who drew back and turned away, who amassed and hoarded.
Surely man was created fretful, when evil visits him, impatient, when good visits him, grudging, save those that pray and continue at their prayers, those in whose wealth is a right known for the beggar and the outcast, who confirm the Day of Doom and go in fear of the chastisement of their Lord (from their Lord's chastisement none feels secure) and guard their private parts save from their wives and what their right hands own, then not being blameworthy (but whoso seeks after more than that, they are the transgressors), and who preserve their trusts and their covenant, and perform their witnessings, and who observe their prayers.
Those shall be in Gardens, high-honoured.
What ails the unbelievers, running with outstretched necks towards thee on the right hand and on the left hand in knots?
What, is every man of them eager to be admitted to a Garden of Bliss?
Not so; for We have created them of what they know.
No! I swear by the Lord of the Easts and Wests, surely We are able to substitute a better than they; We shall not be outstripped.
Then leave them alone to plunge and play until they encounter that day of theirs which they are promised, the day they shall come forth from the tombs hastily, as if they were hurrying unto a waymark, humbled their eyes, overspreading them abasement. That is the day which they were promised.
We sent Noah to his people, saying, 'Warn thy people, ere there come on them a painful chastisement.'
He said, 'O my people, I am unto you a clear warner, saying, "Serve God, and fear Him, and obey you me, and He will forgive you your sins, and defer you to a stated term; God's term, when it comes, cannot be deferred, did you but know."'
He said; 'My Lord, I have called my people by night and by day, but my calling has only increased them in flight.
And whenever I called them, that Thou mightest forgive them, they put their fingers in their ears, and wrapped them in their garments, and persisted, and waxed very proud.
Then indeed I called them openly; then indeed I spoke publicly unto them, and I spoke unto them secretly, and I said, "Ask you forgiveness of your Lord; surely He is ever All-forgiving, and He will loose heaven upon you in torrents and will succour you with wealth and sons, and will appoint for you gardens, and will appoint for you rivers.
What ails you, that you look not for majesty in God, seeing He created you by stages?
Have you not regarded how God created seven heavens one upon another, and set the moon therein for a light and the sun for a lamp?
And God caused you to grow out of the earth, then He shall return you into it, and bring you forth.
And God has laid the earth for you as a carpet, that thereof you may thread ways, ravines."
Noah said, 'My Lord, they have rebelled against me, and followed him whose wealth and children increase him only in loss, and have devised a mighty device and have said, "Do not leave your gods, and do not leave Wadd, nor Suwa', Yaghuth, Ya'uq, neither Nasr."
And they have led many astray. Increase Thou not the evildoers save in error!'
And because of their transgressions they were drowned, and admitted into a Fire, for they found not, apart from God, any to help them.
And Noah said, 'My Lord, leave not upon the earth of the unbelievers even one.
Surely, if Thou leavest them, they will lead Thy servants astray, and will beget none but unbelieving libertines.
My Lord, forgive me and my parents and whosoever enters my house as a believer, and the believers, men and women alike; and do Thou not increase the evildoers save in ruin!'
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