What!  Will they join those with Him who cannot create anything, and are themselves created, and have no power to help them, or to help themselves?

And if ye summon them to “the guidance,” they will not follow you!  It is the same to them whether ye summon them or whether ye hold your peace!

Truly they whom ye call on beside God, are, like yourselves, His servants!  Call on them then, and let them answer you, if what ye say of them be true!

Have they feet to walk with?  Have they hands to hold with?  Have they eyes to see with?  Have they ears to hear with?  Say:  Call on these joint gods of yours; then make your plot against me, and delay it not.

Verily, my Lord is God, who hath sent down “the Book;” and He is the protector of the righteous.

But they whom ye call on beside Him, can lend you no help, nor can they help themselves: 

And if ye summon them to “the guidance,” they hear you not:  thou seest them look towards thee, but they do not see!

Make the best of things;51 and enjoin what is just, and withdraw from the ignorant: 

And if stirrings to evil from Satan stir thee, fly thou for refuge to God:  He verily heareth, knoweth!

Verily, they who fear God, when some phantom from Satan toucheth them, remember Him, and lo! they see clearly.

Their Brethren52 will only continue them in error, and cannot preserve themselves from it.

And when thou bringest not a verse (sign) of the Koran to them, they say, “Hast thou not yet patched it up?53 Say:  I only follow my Lord’s utterances to me.  This is a clear proof on the part of your Lord, and a guidance and a mercy for those who believe.

And when the Koran is read, then listen ye to it and keep silence, that haply ye may obtain mercy.

And think within thine own self on God, with lowliness and with fear and without loud spoken words, at even and at morn; and be not one of the heedless.

Verily they who are round about thy Lord disdain not His service.  They praise Him and prostrate themselves before Him.

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1 The initial letters, it has been conjectured, of (Amara li Muhammad sahdiq), thus spake to me Muhammad the truthful.  But see Sura 1xviii. p. 32.  The first part of this Sura was perhaps revealed when the Arabians were assembled at the Pilgrimage.  See verse 29.

2 A figure of frequent occurence in the Talmud.  See Tr.  Rosh.  Haschana, 17a.

3 Comp.  Sura xx. 118, p. 101.

4 Gen. iii. 15.

5 Lit. towards each Mosque, i.e. towards the kibla of each Mosque.  The word mosque, mesjid, however, is usually applied only to that of Mecca.  The common term in use for larger places of worship is djami, a word unknown, in that sense, to the Koran.