Believers, if you fear God, He will give you guidance, will expiate your bad deeds and forgive you. God's favors are the greatest. 29 Remember how those who bent on denying the truth plotted against you to imprison you or kill you or expel you: they schemed -- but God also schemed. God is the best of schemers. 30 And when Our communications are recited to them, they say: We have heard indeed; if we pleased we could say the like of it; this is nothing but the stories of the ancients. 31 And when they said, “O Allah! If this (the Qur’an) is really the truth from You, then shower upon us a rain of stones from the sky, or bring upon us some painful punishment.” 32 God would not punish them while you were among them nor while they were asking for forgiveness. 33 But what is there so special they have that God should not punish them when they obstruct people from the Holy Mosque, though they are not its (appointed) guardians? Its guardians could be only those who are pious and devout. But most of them do not know. 34 And naught was their prayer at the House but whistling and hand-clapping. Taste then the torment for ye were to disbelieve. 35 Surely those who disbelieve spend their wealth to hinder (people) from the way of Allah; so they shall spend it, then it shall be to them an intense regret, then they shall be overcome; and those who disbelieve shall be driven together to hell. 36 [This is] so that Allah may distinguish the wicked from the good and place the wicked some of them upon others and heap them all together and put them into Hell. It is those who are the losers. 37