No sooner than We bestow mercy on a people after hardship has hit them than they begin to scheme against Our signs. Tell them: 'Allah is swifter in scheming. Our angels are recording all your intriguing. 21 He it is Who makes you travel by land and sea; until when you are in the ships, and they sail on with them in a pleasant breeze, and they rejoice, a violent wind overtakes them and the billows surge in on them from all sides, and they become certain that they are encompassed about, they pray to Allah, being sincere to Him in obedience: If Thou dost deliver us from this, we will most certainly be of the grateful ones. 22 Then when He rescues them, they start wrongfully committing oppression in the earth; O mankind! Your oppression is only a torment against yourselves; derive the benefit until you live in this world; you have then to return to Us and thereupon We shall show you your misdeeds. 23 The likeness of this present life is as water that We send down out of heaven, and the plants of the earth mingle with it whereof men and cattle eat, till, when the earth has taken on its glitter and has decked itself fair, and its inhabitants think they have power over it, Our command comes upon it by night or day, and We make it stubble, as though yesterday it flourished not. Even so We distinguish the signs for a people who reflect. 24 But Allah doth call to the Home of Peace: He doth guide whom He pleaseth to a way that is straight. 25 ۞ the good-doers the reward most fair and a surplus; neither dust nor abasement shall overspread their faces. Those are the inhabitants of Paradise, therein dwelling forever. 26 And (for) those who earned evil*, the recompense of evil is equal to it – and disgrace will come upon them; they will have no one to save them from Allah; as if their faces are covered with pieces of the dark night; it is they who are the people of the fire; they will remain in it forever. (* The disbelievers.) 27 And the Day when We shall muster them all together, We shall say to those who associated others with Allah in His divinity: 'Keep to your places - you and those whom you associated with Allah.' Then We shall remove the veil of foreignness separating them. Those whom they had associated with Allah will say. 'It was not us that you worshipped. 28 Allah sufficeth as a witness between us and you, that we were unaware of your worship. 29 There doth every soul experience that which it did aforetime, and they are returned unto Allah, their rightful Lord, and that which they used to invent hath failed them. 30