The Made Plain

[LXXI.]

MECCA.—54 Verses

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

HA. MIM.² A Revelation from the Compassionate, the Merciful!

A Book whose verses (signs) are MADE PLAIN—an Arabic Koran, for men of knowledge;

Announcer of glad tidings and charged with warnings! But most of them withdraw and hearken not:

And they say, “Our hearts are under shelter from thy teachings, and in our ears is a deafness, and between us and thee there is a veil. Act as thou thinkest right: we verily shall act as we think right.”

SAY: I am only a man like you.³ It is revealed to me that your God is one God: go straight then to Him, and implore his pardon. And woe to those who join gods with God;

Who pay not the alms of obligation, and in the life to come believe not!

But they who believe and do the things that are right shall receive a perfect⁴ recompense.

SAY: Do ye indeed disbelieve in Him who in two days created the earth? and do ye assign Him peers? The Lord of the worlds is He!

And he hath placed on the earth the firm mountains which tower above it; and He hath blessed it, and distributed food throughout it, for the cravings of all alike, in four days:

Then He applied himself to the Heaven, which then was but smoke: and to it and to the Earth He said, “Come ye, whether in obedience or against your will?” and they both said, “We come obedient.”

And He made them seven heavens in two days, and in each heaven made known its office: And we furnished the lower heaven with lights and guardian angels. This, the disposition of the Almighty, the All-knowing.

If they turn away, then SAY: I warn you of a tempest, like the tempest of Ad and Themoud!

When the apostles came to them on every side,⁵ saying, “Worship none but God,” they said, “Had our Lord been pleased to send down, He had surely sent down angels; and in sooth, your message we do not believe.”

As to Ad, they bore them proudly and unjustly in the land, and said, “Who more mighty than we in prowess?” Saw they not that God their creator was mightier than they in prowess? And they rejected our signs.

Therefore on ill-omened days did we send against them an impetuous blast that we might make them taste the chastisement of shame in this world:—but more shameful shall be the chastisement of the life to come; and they shall not be protected.

And as to Themoud, we had vouchsafed them guidance; but to guidance did they prefer blindness; wherefore the tempest of a shameful punishment overtook them for their doings:

But we rescued the believing and the God-fearing:

And warn of the day when the enemies of God shall be gathered⁶ unto the fire urged on in bands:

Until when they reach it, their ears and their eyes and their skins shall bear witness against them of their deeds: