Part 20

Exalted, purified,

By the hands of Scribes, honoured, righteous.

Cursed be man! What hath made him unbelieving?

Of what thing did God create him?

Out of moist germs.3

He created him and fashioned him,

Then made him an easy passage from the womb,

Then causeth him to die and burieth him;

Then, when he pleaseth, will raise him again to life.

Aye! but man hath not yet fulfilled the bidding of his Lord.

Let man look at his food:

It was We who rained down the copious rains,

Then cleft the earth with clefts,

And caused the upgrowth of the grain,

And grapes and healing herbs,

And the olive and the palm,

And enclosed gardens thick with trees,

And fruits and herbage,

For the service of yourselves and of your cattle.

But when the stunning trumpet-blast shall arrive,4

On that day shall a man fly from his brother,

And his mother and his father,

And his wife and his children;

For every man of them on that day his own concerns shall be enough.

There shall be faces on that day radiant,

Laughing and joyous:

And faces on that day with dust upon them:

Blackness shall cover them!