The Pilgrimage

[CVII.]

Medina.¹—78 Verses

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

O Men of Mecca, fear your Lord. Verily, the earthquake of the last Hour will be a tremendous thing!

On the day when ye shall behold it, every suckling woman shall forsake her sucking babe; and every woman that hath a burden in her womb shall cast her burden; and thou shalt see men drunken, yet are they not drunken: but it is the mighty chastisement of God!

There is a man² who, without knowledge, wrangleth about God, and followeth every rebellious Satan;

Concerning whom it is decreed, that he shall surely beguile and guide into the torment of the Flame, whoever shall take him for his Lord.

O men! if ye doubt as to the resurrection, yet, of a truth, have We created you of dust, then of the moist germs of life, then of clots of blood, then of pieces of flesh shapen and unshapen, that We might give you proofs of our power! And We cause one sex or the other, at our pleasure, to abide in the womb until the appointed time; then We bring you forth infants; then permit you to reach your age of strength; and one of you dieth, and another of you liveth on to an age so abject that all his former knowledge is clean forgotten!³ And thou hast seen the earth dried up and barren: but when We send down the rain upon it, it stirreth and swelleth, and groweth every kind of luxuriant herb.

This, for that God is the Truth, and that it is He who quickeneth the dead,-and that He hath power over everything:

And that “the Hour” will indeed come—there is no doubt of it—and that God will wake up to life those who are in the tombs.

A man there is who disputeth about God without knowledge or guidance or enlightening Book,

Turning aside in scorn to mislead others from the way of God! Disgrace shall be his in this world; and on the day of the resurrection, We will make him taste the torment of the burning:—

“This, for thy handywork of old! for God is not unjust to His servants.”

There are some who serve God in a single point. If good come upon one of them, he resteth in it; but if trial come upon him, he turneth him round (to infidelity) with the loss both of this world and of the next! This same is the clear ruin!

He calleth upon that beside God which can neither hurt him nor profit him. This same is the far-gone error!

He calleth on him who would sooner hurt than profit him. Surely, bad the lord, and, surely, bad the vassal!

But God will bring in those who shall believe and do the things that are right, into gardens ’neath which the rivers flow: for God doth that which He pleaseth.

Let him who thinketh that God will not help His Apostle in this world and in the next, stretch a cord aloft as if to destroy himself; then let him cut it, and see whether his devices can bring that⁴ to nought at which he was angry!

Thus send we down the Koran with its clear signs (verses): and because God guideth whom He pleaseth.