Let them then produce a discourse like it, if they speak the Truth.

Were they created by nothing? or were they the creators of themselves?

Created they the Heavens and Earth?  Nay, rather, they have no faith.

Hold they thy Lord’s treasures?  Bear they the rule supreme?

Have they a ladder for hearing the angels?  Let any one who hath heard them bring a clear proof of it.

Hath God daughters and ye sons?

Asketh thou pay of them? they are themselves weighed down with debts.

Have they such a knowledge of the secret things that they can write them down?

Desire they to lay snares for thee?  But the snared ones shall be they who do not believe.

Have they any God beside God?  Glory be to God above what they join with Him.

And should they see a fragment of the heaven falling down, they would say, “It is only a dense cloud.”

Leave them then until they come face to face with the day when they shall swoon away: 

A day in which their snares shall not at all avail them, neither shall they be helped.

And verily, beside this is there a punishment for the evildoers:  but most of them know it not.

Wait thou patiently the judgment of thy Lord, for thou art in our eye; and celebrate the praise of thy Lord when thou risest up,

And in the night-season:  Praise him when the stars are setting.

_______________________

1 Of the Caaba.

2 Comp.  Psalm lxviii. 9.

3 The more prosaic style of this verse indicates a later origin than the context.  Muir places the whole Sura in what he terms the fourth stage of Meccan Suras.

SURA LVI.-THE INEVITABLE [XLV.]

Mecca.-96 Verses

In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

When the day that must come shall have come suddenly,1

None shall treat that sudden coming as a lie: 

Day that shall abase!  Day that shall exalt!

When the earth shall be shaken with a shock,

And the mountains shall be crumbled with a crumbling,

And shall become scattered dust,

And into three bands shall ye be divided:2

Then the people of the right hand3-Oh! how happy shall be the people of the right hand!

And the people of the left hand-Oh! how wretched shall be the people of the left hand!

And they who were foremost on earth-the foremost still.4

These are they who shall be brought nigh to God,

In gardens of delight;

A crowd of the former

And few of the latter generations;

On inwrought couches

Reclining on them face to face: 

Aye-blooming youths go round about to them

With goblets and ewers and a cup of flowing wine;