You are the best of the nations raised up for (the benefit of) men; you enjoin what is right and forbid the wrong and believe in Allah; and if the followers of the Book had believed it would have been better for them; of them (some) are believers and most of them are transgressors. 110 [but] these can never inflict more than a passing hurt on you; and if they fight against you, they will turn their backs upon you [in flight,] and will not be succoured. 111 Wherever they were, they were covered with ignominy, except when they were protected by either a covenant with Allah or a covenant with men. They are laden with the burden of Allah's wrath, and humiliation is stuck upon them - and all this because they rejected the signs of Allah and slayed the Prophets without right, and because they disobeyed and transgressed. 112 ۞ The People of the Book are not all the same. Some of them are straightforward. They recite the words of God in prostration at night. 113 They believe in God and the Last Day, and enjoin the doing of what is right and forbid the doing of what is wrong, and vie with one another in doing good works: and these are among the righteous. 114 Whatever good they do, for them it shall not be denied. Allah knows the cautious. 115 As for those who deny the truth, neither their possessions nor their children shall avail them in the least against God. They will be inmates of the Fire. They will remain there for ever; 116 What they spend in the life of this (material) world May be likened to a wind which brings a nipping frost: It strikes and destroys the harvest of men who have wronged their own souls: it is not Allah that hath wronged them, but they wrong themselves. 117 O believers, take not for your intimates outside yourselves such men spare nothing to ruin you; they yearn for you to suffer. Hatred has already shown itself of their mouths, and what their breasts conceal is yet greater. Now We have made clear to you the signs, if you understand. 118 Ah! ye are those who love them, but they love you not,- though ye believe in the whole of the Book. When they meet you, they say, "We believe": But when they are alone, they bite off the very tips of their fingers at you in their rage. Say: "Perish in your rage; Allah knoweth well all the secrets of the heart." 119 If good fortune comes to you, it grieves them; and if evil befalls you, they rejoice in it. But if you are patient in adversity and conscious of God, their guile cannot harm you at all: for, verily, God encompasses [with His might] all that they do. 120