۞ AND REMEMBER that brother of [the tribe of] Ad, how - seeing that [other] warnings had already come and gone within his own knowledge as well as in times beyond his ken - he warned his people [who lived] among those sand-dunes: "Worship none but God! Verily, I fear lest suffering befall you on an awesome day!" 21 They said, "Have you come to delude us away from our gods? Then bring us what you promise us, if you should be of the truthful." 22 He said, "Only God has the knowledge (of the coming of such torment). I preach to you the message that I have brought, but I can see that you are an ignorant people". 23 Then, when they saw it as a sudden cloud coming towards their valleys, they said, 'This is a cloud, that shall give us rain!' 'Not so; rather it is that you sought to hasten -- a wind, wherein is a painful chastisement, 24 Destroying all things by commandment of its Lord. And morning found them so that naught could be seen save their dwellings. Thus do We reward the guilty folk. 25 We had empowered them to an extent which We have not empowered you, [O people of later times]; and We had endowed them with hearing, and sight, and hearts: but neither their hearing, nor their sight, nor their hearts were of the least avail to them, since they went on rejecting God's revelations; and they were overwhelmed by the very thing which they had been wont to deride. 26