Allah knows what every female bears; and what the wombs fall short of (in gestation), and what they may add. With Him everything is in a fixed measure. 8 (He is) the Knower of the unseen and the seen, the Great, the Exalted. 9 It makes no difference whether you converse in secret or aloud, whether you hide under the cloak of night or walk about freely in the light of day. 10 [thinking that] he has hosts of helpers - both such as can be perceived by him and such as are hidden from him - that could preserve him from whatever God may have willed. Verily, God does not change men's condition unless they change their inner selves; and when God wills people to suffer evil [in consequence of their own evil deeds,] there is none who could avert it: for they have none who could protect them from Him. 11 It is He who shows you lightening, [causing] fear and aspiration, and generates the heavy clouds. 12 and the thunder glorifies Him with His praise and the angels do so too in awe of Him, and He sends His thunderbolts to strike anyone He pleases, yet they dispute about God, who is inexorable in His power. 13 To Him is the Call of truth. Those to whom they call, other than Him, give them no answer. They are like he who stretches out his hands to the water and bids it rise to his mouth, it does not reach it! The prayers of the unbelievers goes astray. 14 All that is in the heavens and the earth prostrates itself, whether willingly or by force, before Allah; and so do their shadows in the morning and in the evening. ۩ 15 Say: 'Who is the Lord of the heavens and of the earth?' Say: 'God.' Say: 'Then have you taken unto you others beside Him to be your protectors, even such as have no power to profit or hurt themselves?' Say: 'Are the blind and the seeing man equal, or are the shadows and the light equal? Or have they ascribed to God associates who created as He created, so that creation is all alike to them?' Say: 'God is the Creator of everything, and He is the One, the Omnipotent.' 16 When God sends down water from the sky and floods run through the valleys, certain quantities of foam rise on the surface of the flood water. This is similar to that foam which rises when you expose something to the heat of a fire to manufacture ornaments or for other reasons. To God Truth and falsehood are like these examples. The foam disappears but what is profitable to the human being stays in the land. Thus, does God coin His parables. 17 For those who obey their Lord is excellence. For those who fail to obey, the reckoning will be hard, even if they possess and give as ransom all that there is on the earth, and as much more; and Hell will be their abode: How wretched is its wide expanse! 18