۞ And remember thou the brother of the Aad when We warned his people in the sandhills - and surely there have passed away warners before him and after him - saying: worship none save Allah, verily I fear for you the torment of a mighty Day. 21 They said: "Have you come to turn us away from our gods? Then bring upon us what you predict for us, if you are a man of truth." 22 'Allah alone has the knowledge' he said, 'I am sent to deliver to you the Message. But I can see that you are ignorant people' 23 So when they saw it as a cloud appearing in the sky advancing towards their valleys, they said: This is a cloud which will give us rain. Nay! it is what you sought to hasten on, a blast of wind in which is a painful punishment, 24 “That destroys all things by the command of its Lord” – so at morning none could be seen except their empty houses; this is the sort of punishment We mete out to the guilty. 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