۞ Certainly was Allah pleased with the believers when they pledged allegiance to you, [O Muhammad], under the tree, and He knew what was in their hearts, so He sent down tranquillity upon them and rewarded them with an imminent conquest 18 And the many spoils that they were to take. God is all-mighty and all-wise. 19 Allah promiseth you much booty that ye will capture, and hath given you this in advance, and hath withheld men's hands from you, that it may be a token for the believers, and that He may guide you on a right path. 20 And there are yet other [gains] which are still beyond your grasp, [but] which God has already encompassed [for you]: for God has the power to will anything. 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 held back their hands from you and your hands from them in the valley of Mecca after He had given you victory over them; and Allah is Seeing what you do. 24 It was the disbelievers who kept you from the Sacred Mosque and prevented your sacrificial offering from reaching its proper place. God would not have kept you from fighting the disbelievers, had there not been believing men and women (among them) whom you did not know and whom you might have unknowingly harmed. God did this because He grants mercy to whomever He wants. Had they been distinguishable from the believers, We would certainly have punished them with a painful torment. 25 Whereas they who are bent on denying the truth harboured a stubborn disdain in their hearts - the stubborn disdain [born] of ignorance - God bestowed from on high His [gift of] inner peace upon His Apostle and the believers, and bound them to the spirit of God-consciousness: for they were most worthy of this [divine gift,] and deserved it well. And God has full knowledge of all things. 26