Believers, do not take as guides those who were given the Book before you who have made of your religion a jest and a pastime, nor the unbelievers. Have fear of Allah, if you are believers. 57 Because they are devoid of understanding, they ridicule your call for prayers saying that it is a useless act. 58 Say thou: O people of the Book! what is it that ye persecute us for save that we believe in Allah and in that which hath been sent down unto us and that which hath been sent down aforetime? and most of you are transgressors. 59 Shall I tell thee of a worse (case) than theirs for retribution with Allah? (Worse is the case of him) whom Allah hath cursed, him on whom His wrath hath fallen and of whose sort Allah hath turned some to apes and swine, and who serveth idols. Such are in worse plight and further astray from the plain road. 60 When they come to you they say: "We believe;" but unbelieving they came and unbelieving go; and God is aware of what they conceal in their hearts. 61 And you see many of them hastening into sin and aggression and the devouring of [what is] unlawful. How wretched is what they have been doing. 62 Why do their rabbis and scholars not forbid them to utter sinful words or to consume what is unlawful? Their actions are indeed vile. 63 The Jews have said, 'God's hand is fettered.' Fettered are their hands, and they are cursed for what they have said. Nay, but His hands are outspread; He expends how He will. And what has been sent down to thee from thy Lord will surely increase many of them in insolence and unbelief; and We have cast between them enmity and hatred, till the Day of Resurrection. As often as they light a fire for war, God will extinguish it. They hasten about the earth, to do corruption there; and God loves not the workers of corruption. 64 If the followers of the Bible would but attain to [true] faith and God-consciousness, We should indeed efface their [previous] bad deeds, and indeed bring them into gardens of bliss; 65 Had the People of the Book observed the Torah and the Gospel, and all that had been revealed to them from their Lord, sustenance would have been showered over them from above and risen from beneath their feet. Some among them certainly keep to the right path; but many of them do things which are evil. 66