Cattle

[LXXXIX.]

Mecca.—165 Verses

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

PRAISE be to God, who hath created the Heavens and the Earth, and ordained the darkness and the light! Yet unto their Lord do the infidels give peers!

He it is who created you of clay—then decreed the term of your life: and with Him is another prefixed term for the resurrection. Yet have ye doubts thereof!

And He is God in the Heavens and on the Earth! He knoweth your secrets and your disclosures! and He knoweth what ye deserve.

Never did one single sign from among the signs of their Lord come to them, but they turned away from it;

And now, after it hath reached them, have they treated the truth itself as a lie. But in the end, a message as to that which they have mocked, shall reach them.

See they not how many generations we have destroyed before them? We had settled them on the earth as we have not settled you, and we sent down the very heavens upon them in copious rains, and we made the rivers to flow beneath their feet: yet we destroyed them in their sins, and raised up other generations to succeed them.

And had we sent down to thee a Book written on parchment, and they had touched it with their hands, the infidels had surely said, “This is nought but plain sorcery.”

They say, too, “Unless an angel be sent down to him.…” But if we had sent down an angel, their judgment would have come on them at once,¹ and they would have had no respite:

And if we had appointed an angel, we should certainly have appointed one in the form of a man, and we should have clothed him before them in garments like their own.²

Moreover, apostles before thee have been laughed to scorn: but that which they laughed to scorn encompassed the mockers among them!

SAY: Go through the land: then see what hath been the end of those who treated them as liars.

SAY: Whose is all that is in the Heavens and the Earth?

SAY: God’s. He had imposed mercy on Himself as a law. He will surely assemble you on the Resurrection day; there is no doubt of it. They who are the authors of their own ruin, are they who will not believe.

His, whatsoever hath its dwelling in the night and in the day! and He, the Hearing, the Knowing!

SAY: Other than God shall I take as Lord, maker of the Heavens and of the Earth, who nourisheth all, and of none is nourished? SAY: Verily, I am bidden to be the first of those who surrender them to God (profess Islam): and, be not thou of those who join gods with God.

SAY: Verily, I fear, should I rebel against my Lord, the punishment of the great day.

From whomsoever it shall be averted on that day, He will have had mercy on him: and this will be the manifest bliss.