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;"

And they caused many to err;2–and thou, too, O Muhammad! shalt be the means of increasing only error in the wicked–

Because of their sins they were drowned, and made to go into the Fire;

And they found that they had no helper save God.

And Noah said, "Lord, leave not one single family of Infidels on the Earth:

For if thou leave them they will beguile thy servants and will beget only sinners, infidels.

O my Lord, forgive me, and my parents, and every one who, being a believer, shall enter my house, and believers men and women: and add to the wicked nought but perdition."

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1 See Sura xxii. 5.

2 Or, the idols had seduced many. Thus Kas. Beidh. gives both interpp.–See on these idols Freytag's Einleitung, p. 349.