۞ Say thou: are ye indeed those who disbelieve in Him who hath created the earth in two days, and set up unto Him peers? That is the Lord of the worlds. 9 He set firm mountains on top (of the earth) and He blessed it. And in four days He ordained in it many provisions, equal to those who ask. 10 Then He directed Himself to the heaven while it was smoke and said to it and to the earth, "Come [into being], willingly or by compulsion." They said, "We have come willingly." 11 So He ordained them seven heavens in two periods, and revealed in every heaven its affair; and We adorned the lower heaven with brilliant stars and (made it) to guard; that is the decree of the Mighty, the Knowing. 12 If they ignore (your message), tell them, "I have warned you against a destructive blast of sound like that which struck the people of `Ad and Thamud. 13 When the Messengers came to them, from before them and behind them (saying): "Worship none but Allah" They said: "If our Lord had so willed, He would surely have sent down the angels. So indeed! We disbelieve in that with which you have been sent." 14 As for the tribe of 'Ad, they behaved arrogantly in the land without any justification and said, "Who is mightier than we in power?" Did they not see that God, who created them, was mightier than they in power? Still they continued to deny Our signs, 15 and thereupon We let loose upon them a storm wind raging through days of misfortune, so as to give them, in the life of this world, a foretaste of suffering through humiliation: but [their] suffering in the life to come will be far more humiliating, and they will have none to succour them. 16 And as for [the tribe of] Thamud, We offered them guidance, but they chose blindness in preference to guidance: and so the thunderbolt of shameful suffering fell upon them as an outcome of all [the evil] that they had wrought; 17 Yet We delivered those who believed and were God-fearing. 18