۞ God was pleased with the believers when they swore allegiance to you under the tree, for He knew well what was in their hearts, and sent down tranquility on them, and rewarded them with an expeditious victory 18 and with many future gains -- God is mighty and wise. 19 God has promised you many spoils to take; these He has hastened to you, and has restrained the hands of men from you, and that it may be a sign to the believers, and to guide you on a straight path, 20 and other spoils you were not able to take; God had encompassed them already. God is powerful over everything. 21 If those who deny the truth were to fight you, they would certainly turn their backs; then they would find neither protector nor helper: 22 the wont of God, as in the past before, and thou shalt never find any changing the wont of God. 23 And He it is Who restrained their hands from you and your hands from them in the vale of Makka, after He had made you superior to them; and Allah is of that which ye work ever a Beholder. 24 They were those who disbelieved, and hindered you from the Sacred Mosque, and hindered the detained offering that it should arrive at the goal thereof. And had it not been for believing men and believing women whom ye knew not, and that ye might have trampled on them, and thus there might have befallen you crime on their account unwittingly. But this He did that He might bring into His mercy whomsoever He will. Had they been distinguished one from another, surely We had tormented those who disbelieved among them with a torment afflictive. 25 Since the disbelievers held zealous ignorance in their hearts, like that of the pre-Islamic age of darkness, God gave confidence to His Messenger and to the believers, binding them to the principle of piety which they deserve. God has the knowledge of all things. 26