12 Brought, says Rabbi Jehoshua, from Paradise by an angel.  Midr. fol.

13 This salutation.

14 The Arabic particle which is here and elsewhere rendered of old (also, already, certainly) serves to mark the position of a past act or event as prior to the time present, and in all such passages merely gives a fulness and intensity to our perfect, or pluperfect tense.

15 The form of this word is altered in the original for the sake of the rhyme.

16 Lit. he cast lots (with the sailors).

17 Nequequam vos ad illud colendum estis Seducturi.  Mar.

18 This verse and the six preceding are the words of the Angel.

19 Compare verse 69.

SURA LXXI.-NOAH [LI.]

Mecca.-29 Verses

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

We sent Noah to his people, and said to him, “Warn thou thy people ere there come on them an afflictive punishment.”

He said, “O my people!  I come to you a plain-spoken warner: 

Serve God and fear Him, and obey me: 

Your sins will He forgive you, and respite you till the fixed Time; for when God’s fixed Time hath come, it shall not be put back.  Would that ye knew this!”

He said, “Lord I have cried to my people night and day; and my cry doth but make them flee from me the more.

So oft as I cry to them, that thou mayest forgive them, they thrust their fingers into their ears, and wrap themselves in their garments, and persist in their error, and are disdainfully disdainful.

Then I cried aloud to them: 

Then again spake I with plainness, and in private did I secretly address them: 

And I said, Beg forgiveness of your Lord, for He is ready to forgive.

He will send down the very Heaven upon you in plenteous rains;

And will increase you in wealth and children; and will give you gardens, and will give you watercourses:-

What hath come to you that ye hope not for goodness from the hand of God?

For He it is who hath formed you by successive steps.1

See ye not how God hath created the seven heavens one over the other?

And He hath placed therein the moon as a light, and hath placed there the sun as a torch;

And God hath caused you to spring forth from the earth like a plant;

Hereafter will He turn you back into it again, and will bring you forth anew-

And God hath spread the earth for you like a carpet,

That ye may walk therein along spacious paths."’

Said Noah, “O my Lord! they rebel against me, and they follow those whose riches and children do but aggravate their ruin.”

And they plotted a great plot;

And they said, “Forsake not your Gods; forsake not Wadd nor Sowah,

Nor Yaghuth and Yahuk and Nesr;”