۞ AND REMEMBER that brother of [the tribe of] Ad, how - seeing that [other] warnings had already come and gone within his own knowledge as well as in times beyond his ken - he warned his people [who lived] among those sand-dunes: "Worship none but God! Verily, I fear lest suffering befall you on an awesome day!" 21 They said: "Hast thou come in order to turn us aside from our gods? Then bring upon us the (calamity) with which thou dost threaten us, if thou art telling the truth?" 22 He said, "Only God has the knowledge (of the coming of such torment). I preach to you the message that I have brought, but I can see that you are an ignorant people". 23 Then when they beheld it as an overpeering cloud tending toward their valleys they said: yonder is an overpeering cloud bringing us rain. Nay it is that which ye sought to be hastened: a wind wherein is a torment afflictive. 24 It shall annihilate everything by the command of its Lord. Wherefore they became such that naught could be seen save their dwellings Thus We requite a nation of the culprits. 25 And We had certainly established them in such as We have not established you, and We made for them hearing and vision and hearts. But their hearing and vision and hearts availed them not from anything [of the punishment] when they were [continually] rejecting the signs of Allah; and they were enveloped by what they used to ridicule. 26