Popular Translations
Muhammad Asad
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
Arthur John Arberry
Then why did those not help them that they had taken to themselves as mediators, gods apart from God? Not so; but they went astray from them, and that was their calumny, and what they had been forging
Yusuf Ali (Saudi Rev. 1985)
Why then was no help forthcoming to them from those whom they worshipped as gods, besides Allah, as a means of access (to Allah)? Nay, they left them in the lurch: but that was their falsehood and their invention
Arabic
فَلَوۡلَا نَصَرَهُمُ ٱلَّذِینَ ٱتَّخَذُوا۟ مِن دُونِ ٱللَّهِ قُرۡبَانًا ءَالِهَةَۢۖ بَلۡ ضَلُّوا۟ عَنۡهُمۡۚ وَذَ ٰلِكَ إِفۡكُهُمۡ وَمَا كَانُوا۟ یَفۡتَرُونَ ٢٨
Transliteration (2021)
falawlā naṣarahumu alladhīna ittakhadhū min dūni l-lahi qur'bānan ālihatan bal ḍallū ʿanhum wadhālika if'kuhum wamā kānū yaftarūn