One who supplicates asked for a punishment that will fall
on the ones who are ungrateful for which there will be no one to avert
from God, the Possessor of the Stairways of Ascent.
The angels and the Spirit go up to Him on a Day whose measure had been fifty thousand years.
So have thou patience with a graceful patience.
Truly, they see it as distant,
but We see it as near at hand.
On a Day the heaven will become as molten copper
and the mountains be as wool clusters
and no loyal friend will ask a loyal friend,
although they are given sight of them. One who sins would wish that he offer for ransom —from the punishment of that day—his children
or his companion wife, or his brother
or his relatives who gave him refuge,
or whoever is on the earth altogether, again, if that would rescue him.
No indeed. Truly, it is the furnace of hell
removing their scalps,
calling whoever drew back and turned away
and gathered wealth and amassed.
Truly, the human being was created fretful.
When the worst afflicted him, he is impatient.
And when the good afflicted him, begrudging.
But the ones who formally pray,
those, they are ones who continue with their formal prayers
and those who in their wealth there is a known obligation towards
the one who begs and the one who is deprived
and those who sincerely validate the Day of Judgment.
And those, they are ones who are apprehensive of the punishment of their Lord.
Truly, as to the punishment of their Lord, there is no one who is safe from it.
Those, they are ones who guard their private parts,
but not from their spouses or what their right hands possessed. Truly, they are not ones who will be reproached.
But whoever was looking beyond that, those, they are ones who turn away.
And those, they who in their trusts and to their compacts are ones who shepherd.
And those, they who, giving their testimony, are ones who uphold.
And those, they who over their formal prayers are watchful.
Those will be in Gardens, ones who are honored.
What is with those who were ungrateful—ones who run forward towards thee, eyes fixed in horror,
to the right and the left, tied in knots.
Is not every man of them desirous of being caused to enter into a Garden of Bliss?
No indeed. Truly, We created them out of what they know.
So I swear an oath by the Lord of the rising places and the setting places, that We certainly are ones who have power
to substitute better for them. And We are not ones who are outrun.
So let them engage in idle talk and play until they encounter the Day of theirs that they are promised,
the Day when they will go forth swiftly from their tombs as though they had been hurrying to a goal
with their sight, that which is humbled. Abasement will come over them. That is the Day which they had been promised.