۞ (Muhammad), recall the brother of the people of Ad, when he warned his people in the valley of al-ahqaf saying, "There existed many warners before and after him. Do not worship anything other than God. I am afraid for you about the torment of the great Day". 21 They said: "Have you come to turn us away from our aliha (gods)? Then bring us that with which you threaten us, if you are one of the truthful!" 22 He said, 'Knowledge is only with God, and I deliver to you the Message with which I was sent; but I see you are an ignorant people.' 23 When they saw the torment as a cloud proceeding to their valleys, they said, "This cloud will bring us rain." He said, "No, it is the torment which you wanted to suffer immediately. It is a wind bearing and painful torment. 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 yet, We had established them securely in a manner in which We have never established you, [O people of later times;] and We had endowed them with hearing, and sight, and [knowledgeable] hearts: but neither their hearing, nor their sight, nor their hearts were of the least avail to them, seeing that they went on rejecting God's messages; and [in the end] they were overwhelmed by the very thing which they had been wont to deride. 26