Quran — Page 505

AND REMEMBER that brother of [the tribe of] Ad, how - seeing that [other] warnings had already come and gone within his own knowledge as well as in times beyond his ken - he warned his people [who lived] among those sand-dunes: “Worship none but God! Verily, I fear lest suffering befall you on an awesome day!”

They answered: “Hast thou come to seduce us away from our gods? Bring, then, upon us that [doom] with which thou threaten us, if thou art a man of truth!”

Said he: “Knowledge [of when it is to befall you] rests with God alone: I but convey unto you the message with which I have been entrusted; but I see that you are people ignorant [of right and wrong]!”

And so, when they beheld it in the shape of a dense cloud approaching their valleys, they exclaimed, “This is but a heavy cloud which will bring us [wel­come] rain!” [But Hud said:] “Nay, but it is the very thing which you [so contemptuously] sought to hasten - a wind bearing grievous suffering,

bound to destroy everything at its Sustainer’s behest!” And then they were so utterly wiped out that nothing could be seen save their [empty] dwellings: thus do We requite people lost in sin.

And yet, We had established them securely in a manner in which We have never established you, [O people of later times;] and We had endowed them with hearing, and sight, and [knowledgeable] hearts: but neither their hearing, nor their sight, nor their hearts were of the least avail to them, seeing that they went on rejecting God’s messages; and [in the end] they were overwhelmed by the very thing which they had been wont to deride.

Thus have We destroyed many a [sinful] community living round about you; and yet, [before destroying them,] We had given many facets to [Our warning] messages, so that they might turn back [from their evil ways].

But, then, did those [beings] whom they had chosen to worship as deities beside God, hoping that they would bring them nearer [to Him], help them [in the end]? Nay, they forsook them: for that [alleged divinity] was but an outcome of their self-delusion and all their false imagery.