۞ O YOU who have attained to faith! Be ever steadfast in upholding equity, bearing witness to the truth for the sake of God, even though it be against your own selves or your parents and kinsfolk. Whether the person concerned be rich or poor, God's claim takes precedence over [the claims of] either of them. Do not, then, follow your own desires, lest you swerve from justice: for if you distort [the truth,] behold, God is indeed aware of all that you do! 135 O you who have attained to faith! Hold fast unto your belief in God and His Apostle, and in the divine writ which He has bestowed from on high upon His Apostle, step by step, as well as in the revelation which He sent down aforetime: for he who denies God, and His angels, and His revelations, and His apostles, and the Last Day, has indeed gone far astray. 136 Those who believe, then reject faith, then believe (again) and (again) reject faith, and go on increasing in unbelief,- Allah will not forgive them nor guide them nor guide them on the way. 137 Give thou good tidings to the hypocrites that for them awaits a painful chastisement. 138 Do those who take unbelievers as their friends in preference to the faithful seek power from them? But all power belongs to God. 139 You have been commanded in the Book that whensoever you hear God's messages denied or derided, do not sit in that company until they begin talking of other things, or you will be no different from them. Indeed God will put the hypocrites and infidels together in Hell. 140 Those who wait to see what befalls you, say in ease success comes to you from God: "Were we not with you?" But if fortune favours the infidels, they say: "Did we not overpower you, and yet protected you against the believers?" But God will judge between you on the Day of Resurrection; and God will never give the unbelievers a way over the faithful. 141