۞ And remember the brother of Ad, when he warned his people beside the sand-dunes -- and already warners had passed away alike before him and behind him -- saying, 'Serve none but God! Truly I fear for you the chastisement of a dreadful day. 21 They said, "Have you come to delude us away from our gods? Then bring us what you promise us, if you should be of the truthful." 22 He said, "God alone knows when it will come, and I deliver to you the message with which I am sent, but I see you are a people who are ignorant." 23 When they saw the scourge advancing towards their valleys, they said: “This is a cloud that will bring much rain to us.” “By no means; it is what you had sought to hasten -- a wind-storm bearing a grievous chastisement 24 “That destroys all things by the command of its Lord” – so at morning none could be seen except their empty houses; this is the sort of punishment We mete out to the guilty. 25 We had empowered them to an extent which We have not empowered you, [O people of later times]; and We had endowed them with hearing, and sight, and hearts: but neither their hearing, nor their sight, nor their hearts were of the least avail to them, since they went on rejecting God's revelations; and they were overwhelmed by the very thing which they had been wont to deride. 26