Part 69

For He it is who hath formed you by successive steps.1

See ye not how God hath created the seven heavens one over the other?

And He hath placed therein the moon as a light, and hath placed there the sun as a torch;

And God hath caused you to spring forth from the earth like a plant;

Hereafter will He turn you back into it again, and will bring you forth anew-

And God hath spread the earth for you like a carpet,

That ye may walk therein along spacious paths."'

Said Noah, "O my Lord! they rebel against me, and they follow those whose riches and children do but aggravate their ruin."

And they plotted a great plot;

And they said, "Forsake not your Gods; forsake not Wadd nor Sowah,

Nor Yaghuth and Yahuk and Nesr;"

And they caused many to err;2-and thou, too, O Muhammad! shalt be the means of increasing only error in the wicked-

Because of their sins they were drowned, and made to go into the Fire;

And they found that they had no helper save God.

And Noah said, "Lord, leave not one single family of Infidels on the Earth:

For if thou leave them they will beguile thy servants and will beget only sinners, infidels.

O my Lord, forgive me, and my parents, and every one who, being a believer, shall enter my house, and believers men and women: and add to the wicked nought but perdition."

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1 See Sura xxii. 5.

2 Or, the idols had seduced many. Thus Kas. Beidh. gives both interpp.-See on these idols Freytag's Einleitung, p. 349.

SURA LXXVI.-MAN [LII.]

MECCA.-31 Verses

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

Doth not a long time pass over MAN, during which he is a thing unremembered?1

We have created man from the union of the sexes that we might prove him; and hearing, seeing, have we made him:

In a right way have we guided him, be he thankful or ungrateful.

For the Infidels we have got ready chains and collars and flaming fire.

But a wine cup tempered at the camphor fountain2 the just shall quaff: