3 By djinn.  Comp.  Sur. xxxiv. 45.

4 In bearing the taunts of the unbelievers with patience.

5 They did not add the restriction, if God will.

6 An expression implying a grievous calamity; borrowed probably from the action of stripping previous to wrestling, swimming, etc.

7 Lit. the companion of the fish.  Comp. on Jonah Sura xxxvii. 139-148, and Sura xxi. 87.

SURA XC.-THE SOIL [XVIII.]

Mecca.-20 Verses

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

I need not to swear by this soil,

This soil on which thou dost dwell,

Or by sire and offspring!1

Surely in trouble have we created man.

What! thinketh he that no one hath power over him?

“I have wasted,” saith he, “enormous riches!”

What! thinketh he that no one regardeth him?

What! have we not made him eyes,

And tongue, and lips,

And guided him to the two highways?2

Yet he attempted not the steep.

And who shall teach thee what the steep is?

It is to ransom the captive,3

Or to feed in the day of famine,

The orphan who is near of kin, or the poor that lieth in the dust;

Beside this, to be of those who believe, and enjoin stedfastness on each other, and enjoin compassion on each other.

These shall be the people of the right hand: 

While they who disbelieve our signs,

Shall be the people of the left.

Around them the fire shall close.

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1 Lit. and begetter and what he hath begotten

2 Of good and evil.

3 Thus we read in Hilchoth Matt’noth Aniim, c. 8, “The ransoming of captives takes precedence of the feeding and clothing of the poor, and there is no commandment so great as this.”

SURA CV.-THE ELEPHANT [XIX.]

Mecca.-5 Verses

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

Hast thou not seen1 how thy Lord dealt with the army of the elephant?

Did he not cause their stratagem to miscarry?

And he sent against them birds in flocks (ababils),

Claystones did they hurl down upon them,

And he made them like stubble eaten down!

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1 This Sura is probably Muhammad’s appeal to the Meccans, intended at the same time for his own encouragement, on the ground of their deliverance from the army of Abraha, the Christian King of Abyssinia and Arabia Felix, said to have been lost in the year of Muhammad’s birth in an expedition against Mecca for the purpose of destroying the Caaba.  This army was cut off by small-pox (Wakidi; Hishami), and there is no doubt, as the Arabic word for small-pox