the day of
Resurrection:
Under it shall they remain: and grievous, in the day of Resurrection, shall it be to them to bear.
On that day there shall be a blast on the trumpet, and We will gather the wicked together on that day with leaden23 eyes:
They shall say in a low voice, one to another,-"Ye tarried but ten days on earth."
We are most knowing with respect to that which they will say when the most veracious24 of them will say. "Ye have not tarried above a day."
And they will ask thee of the mountains: SAY: scattering my Lord will scatter them in dust;
And he will leave them a level plain: thou shalt see in it no hollows or jutting hills.
On that day shall men follow their summoner25-he marcheth straight on: and low shall be their voices before the God of Mercy, nor shalt thou hear aught but the light footfall.
No intercession shall avail on that day, save his whom the God of Mercy shall allow to intercede, and whose words he shall approve.
He knoweth their future and their past; but in their own knowledge they comprehend it not:-
And humble shall be their faces before Him that Liveth, the Self-subsisting: and undone he, who shall bear the burden of iniquity;
But he who shall have done the things that are right and is a believer, shall fear neither wrong nor loss.
Thus have We sent down to thee an Arabic Koran, and have set forth menaces therein diversely, that haply they may fear God, or that it may give birth to reflection in them.
Exalted then be God, the King, the Truth! Be not hasty in its recital26 while the revelation of it to thee is incomplete. Say rather, "O my Lord, increase knowledge unto me."
And of old We made a covenant with Adam; but he forgat it; and we found no firmness of purpose in him.
And when We said to the angels, "Fall down and worship Adam," they worshipped all, save Eblis, who refused: and We said, "O Adam! this truly is a foe to thee and to thy wife. Let him not therefore drive you out of the garden, and ye become wretched;
For to thee is it granted that thou shalt not hunger therein, neither shalt thou be naked;
But Satan whispered him: said he, "O Adam! shall I shew thee the tree of
Eternity,27 and the Kingdom that faileth not?"
And they both ate thereof, and their nakedness appeared to them, and they began to sew of the leaves of the Garden to cover them, and Adam disobeyed his Lord and went astray.
Afterwards his Lord chose him for himself, and was turned towards him, and guided him.
And God said, "Get ye all down hence, the one of you a foe unto the other.
Hereafter shall guidance come unto you from me;
And whoso followeth my guidance shall not err, and shall not be wretched:
But whoso turneth away from my monition, his truly shall be a life of misery:
And We will assemble him with others on the day of Resurrection, blind."28
He will say, "O my Lord! why hast thou assembled me with others, blind? whereas I was endowed with sight."
He will answer, "Thus is it, because our signs came unto thee and thou didst forget them, and thus shalt thou be forgotten this day."
Even thus will We recompense him who hath transgressed and hath not believed in the signs of his Lord; and assuredly the chastisement of the next world will be more severe and more lasting.
Are not they, who walk the very places where they dwelt, aware how many generations we have destroyed before them? Verily in this are signs to men of insight.
And had not a decree of respite from thy Lord first gone forth, their chastisement had at once ensued. Yet the time is fixed.
Put up then with what they say; and celebrate the praise of thy Lord before the sunrise, and before its setting; and some time in the night do thou praise him, and in the extremes29 of the day, that thou haply mayest please Him.
And strain not thine eye after what We have bestowed on divers of them-the braveries of this world-that we may thereby prove them. The portion which thy Lord will give, is better and more lasting.
Enjoin prayer on thy family, and persevere therein. We ask not of thee to find thine own provision-we will provide for thee, and a happy issue shall there be to piety.
But they say, "If he come not to us with a sign from his Lord . . .!"30 But have not clear proofs for the Koran come to them, in what is in the Books of old?
And had We destroyed them by a chastisement before its time, they would surely have said, "O our Lord! How could we believe if thou didst not send unto us an Apostle that we might follow thy signs ere that we were humbled and disgraced."
SAY: Each one of us awaiteth the end. Wait ye then, and ye shall know which of us have been followers of the even way, and who hath been the rightly guided.
1. The first 14 or 16 verses of this Sura are said to have induced Omar to embrace Islam (His. 226. Ibn Sâd, i. and v. Comp. Weil, p. 60. Causs. i. 396 ff.) in the sixth year before the Hejira.
2. Freytag supposes these letters to mean, Hush! but see Sura lxviii. 1, p. 32.
3. Lit. if thou raise thy voice.
4. Lit. guidance. Moses had lost his way, say the Commentators, when journeying to Egypt to visit his mother.
5. The Muhammadan Commentators tell how Moses when a child burnt his tongue with a live coal. The same story is found in Midr. Jalkut on Ex. c. 166, and in Shalsheleth Hakabalah, p. 5, b. Ed. Amsterd.
6. Lit vizir.
7. Or, strengthen my back.
8. The form of the word in the original is not the pure Hebraic, but the later Rabbinic form.
9. See Sura [lxxix.] xxviii. 11, 12.
10. What is their condition after their death as to happiness or misery. Beidh. whom Sale follows. But the word state, which Mar. renders mens, refers rather to their creed. "How," enquires Pharaoh, "do you explain the fact that the generations of men have always practised a different worship?"
11. Lit. pairs.