Ask the children of Israel how many a clear sign We had given them. But if one changes the favour of God after having received it, then remember, God is severe in revenge. 211 Decked out fair to the unbelievers is the present life, and they deride the believers; but those who were godfearing shall be above them on the Resurrection Day; and God provides whomsoever He will without reckoning. 212 ALL MANKIND were once one single community; [then they began to differ] whereupon God raised up the prophets as heralds of glad tidings and as warners, and through them bestowed revelation from on high, setting forth the truth, so that it might decide between people with regard to all on which they had come to hold divergent views. Yet none other than the selfsame people who had been granted this [revelation] began, out of mutual jealousy, to disagree about its meaning after all evidence of the truth had come unto them. But God guided the believers unto the truth about which, by His leave, they had disagreed: for God guides onto a straight way him that wills [to be guided]. 213 Deem ye that ye will enter the Garden while ye hath not come upon you the like of that which came upon those who have passed away before you? There touched them adversity and distress, and shaken were they, until the apostle and those who believed with him said; when cometh the succour of Allah? Lo! verily Allah's succour is nigh. 214 They ask you as to what they should spend. Say: Whatever wealth you spend, it is for the parents and the near of kin and the orphans and the needy and the wayfarer, and whatever good you do, Allah surely knows it. 215 You have been enjoined to go to war, and you dislike it; it may be that you dislike a thing and the same is good for you, and you love a thing and the same is bad for you: Allah knows but you do not. 216