The Heights (Al-Ma'aarej)
In the name of God, The Most Gracious, The Dispenser of Grace
Someone has (needlessly) demanded to experience the torment (of God), 1 The infidels, of which there is no averter. 2 from punishing them. He is the Lord of the Ascending Stairways, 3 To Him ascend the angels and the Spirit in a day the measure of which is fifty thousand years. 4 Wherefore be thou patient with a becoming patience. 5 they see it as being far off; 6 but We see it near. 7 The day when the sky will be like molten silver. 8 and the mountains shall be as plucked wool-tufts, 9 And no friend inquires after friend 10 though they shall be within sight of each other. The guilty one will gladly ransom himself from the torment of that Day by sacrificing his own children, 11 And his wife and his brother 12 And his nearest kindred who shelter him 13 and of whoever [else] lives on earth, all of them - so that he could but save himself. 14 Nay, verily it is a furnace 15 Plucking out (his being) right to the skull!- 16 and drag into it anyone who has turned away (from obeying God), 17 and amass [wealth] and thereupon withhold [it from their fellow-men]. 18 ۞ Human beings are created greedy. 19 when evil visits him, impatient, 20 when good visits him, grudging, 21 Except the observers of prayer - 22 Those who are constant in their prayer 23 those who give a due share of their wealth 24 For the beggar who asks, and for the unlucky who has lost his property and wealth, (and his means of living has been straitened); 25 And those who believe in the Day of Recompense 26 and go in fear of the punishment of their Lord, 27 for none may ever feel secure from the punishment of their Lord; 28 And those who guard their private parts 29 Except with their wives and the (captives) whom their right hands possess,- for (then) they are not to be blamed, 30 But those who trespass beyond this are transgressors;- 31 and those who are faithful to their trusts and to their pledges; 32 Who uphold their testimonies, 33 and (finally) those who do not miss their ritual - prayers at the prescribed times; 34 These it is who in the gardens [of paradise] shall be honoured! 35