۞ SAY: "Would you indeed deny Him who has created the earth in two aeons? And do you claim that there is any power that could rival Him, the Sustainer of all the worlds?" 9 And He placed therein mountains firmly rooted rising above it, and blessed it, and ordained therein the sustenance thereof, all this in four days, complete; this for the inquirers. 10 Then He lifted Himself to heaven when it was smoke, and said to it and to the earth, "Come willingly, or unwillingly!" They said, "We come willingly." 11 Then He decreed them as seven heavens in two days, and revealed unto each heaven the command thereof; and We bedecked the nether heaven with lamps and placed therein a guard. That is the ordinance of the Mighty, the Knower. 12 But if they turn aside, then say: I have warned you of a scourge like the scourge of Ad and Samood. 13 When their Noble Messengers approached them from front and from behind saying, "Do not worship any one except Allah"; they said, "If our Lord willed, He would surely have sent down angels – we therefore deny whatever you have been sent with.” 14 So those who were 'Ad turned insolent unjustly in the land, and said: "Who is stronger than us?" Did they not see that God who created them was greater far in power than they? Yet they refused to believe 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 As for Thamood, We guided them, but they preferred blindness above guidance, so the thunderbolt of the chastisement of humiliation seized them for that they were earning. 17 and We saved [only] those who had attained to faith and were conscious of Us. 18