۞ 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: Have you come to us to turn us away from our gods; then bring us what you threaten us with, if you are of the truthful ones. 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 So when they saw it as a cloud advancing towards their valleys, they said: "This is just a passing cloud that will bring us rain." "No. It is what you were trying to hasten: The wind which carries the grievous punishment! 24 Destroying everything by command of its Lord. And they became so that nothing was seen [of them] except their dwellings. Thus do We recompense the criminal people. 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