۞ Say: 'Do you disbelieve in Him who created the earth in two days? And do you set up equals with Him? He is the Lord of the Worlds' 9 And He made in it mountains above its surface, and He blessed therein and made therein its foods, in four periods: alike for the seekers. 10 Then He turned to the heavens, and it was smoke. So He said to it and the earth: "Come with willing obedience or perforce." They said: "We come willingly." 11 And He [it is who] decreed that they become seven heavens in two aeons, and imparted unto each heaven its function. And We adorned the skies nearest to the earth with lights, and made them secure: such is the ordaining of the Almighty, the All-Knowing. 12 If they ignore (your message), tell them, "I have warned you against a destructive blast of sound like that which struck the people of `Ad and Thamud. 13 When their apostles came to them from before them and from behind them, saying, Serve nothing but Allah, they said: If our Lord had pleased He would certainly have sent down angels, so we are surely unbelievers in that with which you are sent. 14 As for Ad, they waxed proud in the earth without right, and they said, 'Who is stronger than we in might?' What, did they not see that God, who created them, was stronger than they in might? And they denied Our signs. 15 whereupon We sent upon them a fierce wind on inauspicious days that We might make them taste a degrading chastisement in the life of this world. And surely the chastisement of the Hereafter is even more degrading. There will be none to help them there. 16 As for the Thamud We offered them Our guidance, but they preferred blindness to guidance. So the lightning-bolt of the punishment of humiliation seized them on account of their misdeeds. 17 And We delivered those who believed and were godfearing. 18