God knows well what every female conceives. He knows what the wombs spoil and dispose of. In His plans everything has been designed proportionately. 8 Knower of the hidden and the manifest! the Great! the Exalted. 9 Equal* are the one among you who speaks softly and one who speaks aloud, and one who is hidden during the night and one who walks during the daytime. (* For Allah.) 10 For each (person), there are angels in succession, before and behind him. They guard him by the Command of Allah. Verily! Allah will not change the good condition of a people as long as they do not change their state of goodness themselves (by committing sins and by being ungrateful and disobedient to Allah). But when Allah wills a people's punishment, there can be no turning back of it, and they will find besides Him no protector. 11 It is He who shows you the lightning, for fear and hope, and produces the heavy clouds; 12 and the thunder extols His limitless glory and praises Him, and [so do] the angels, in awe of Him; and He [it is who] lets loose the thunderbolts and strikes with them whom He wills. And yet, they stubbornly argue about God, notwithstanding [all evidence] that He alone has the power to contrive whatever His unfathomable wisdom wills! 13 Unto Him is the real prayer. Those unto whom they pray beside Allah respond to them not at all, save as (is the response to) one who stretcheth forth his hands toward water (asking) that it may come unto his mouth, and it will never reach it. The prayer of disbelievers goeth (far) astray. 14 Whatever beings there are in the heavens and the earth do prostrate themselves to Allah (Acknowledging subjection),- with good-will or in spite of themselves: so do their shadows in the morning and evenings. ۩ 15 (Muhammad), ask them, "Who is the Lord of the heavens and the earth?" Say, "It is God." Ask them, "Why then have you taken guardians other than God when such guardians can neither benefit nor harm themselves?" Ask them, "Are the seeing and the blind equal? Is light equal to darkness?" Do they consider that their idols have created anything like that of God, thus, both creations appear to them to be alike?" Say, "God alone is the Creator of all things and He is the One, the All-Dominant." 16 He sends down water (rain) from the sky, and the valleys flow according to their measure, but the flood bears away the foam that mounts up to the surface, and (also) from that (ore) which they heat in the fire in order to make ornaments or utensils, rises a foam like unto it, thus does Allah (by parables) show forth truth and falsehood. Then, as for the foam it passes away as scum upon the banks, while that which is for the good of mankind remains in the earth. Thus Allah sets forth parables (for the truth and falsehood, i.e. Belief and disbelief). 17 For those who answered Allah's call is bliss; and for those who answered not His call, if they had all that is in the earth, and therewith the like thereof, they would proffer it as ransom. Such will have a woeful reckoning, and their habitation will be hell, a dire abode. 18