Brackish could we make it, if we pleased:  will ye not then be thankful?

What think ye?  The fire which ye obtain by friction-

Is it ye who rear its tree, or do we rear it?

It is we who have made it for a memorial and a benefit to the wayfarers of the desert,

Praise therefore the name of thy Lord, the Great.

It needs not that I swear by the setting of the stars,

And it is a great oath, if ye knew it,

That this is the honourable Koran,

Written in the preserved Book:16

Let none touch it but the purified,17

It is a revelation from the Lord of the worlds.

Such tidings as these will ye disdain?

Will ye make it your daily bread to gainsay them?

Why, at the moment when the soul of a dying man shall come up into his throat,

And when ye are gazing at him,

Though we are nearer to him than ye, although ye see us not:-

Why do ye not, if ye are to escape the judgment,

Cause that soul to return?  Tell me, if ye speak the truth.

But as to him who shall enjoy near access to God,

His shall be repose, and pleasure, and a garden of delights.

Yea, for him who shall be of the people of the right hand,

Shall be the greeting from the people of the right hand-"Peace be to thee.”

But for him who shall be of those who treat the prophets as deceivers,

And of the erring,

His entertainment shall be of scalding water,

And the broiling of hell-fire.

Verily this is a certain truth: 

Praise therefore the name of thy Lord, the Great.

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1 The renderings of Mar. cum inciderit casura, or as in Sur. lxix, 15, ingruerit ingruens nearly express the peculiar force of the Arabic verb and of the noun formed from it; i.e. a calamity that falls suddenly and surely.  Weil renders, ween der Auferstehung’s Tag eintritt (p. 389).  Lane, when the calamity shall have happened.

2 Comp.  Tr.  Rosch Haschanah, fol. 16, 6.

3 Lit., the companions of the right hand, what shall be the companions of the right hand! and thus in verses 9, 37, 40.

4 Lit., the preceders, the preceders.

5 See Sura liii. 14, p. 69.

6 Probably the banana according to others, the acacia gummifera.

7 “A Muslim of some learning professed to me that he considered the descriptions of Paradise in the Koran to be, in a great measure, figurative; ‘like those,’ said he, ‘in the book of the Revelation of St. John;’ and he assured me that many learned Muslims were of the same opinion.”  Lane’s Modern Egyptians, i. p. 75, note.

8 Like them, grow not old.

9 This seems a direct contradiction to verse 14, unless we suppose with Beidhawi that an inferior and more numerous class of believers are here spoken of.