O you who have attained to faith! If you remain conscious of God He will endow you with a standard by which to discern the true from the false, and will efface your bad deeds, and will forgive you your sins; for God is limitless in His great bounty. 29 Remember how those who bent on denying the truth plotted against you to imprison you or kill you or expel you: they schemed -- but God also schemed. God is the best of schemers. 30 When Our messages were read out to them, they said: "We have heard. We could certainly compose (writings) like them if we choose. They are but only tales of long ago." 31 And when they said, “O Allah! If this (the Qur’an) is really the truth from You, then shower upon us a rain of stones from the sky, or bring upon us some painful punishment.” 32 But God would not punish them while you [Prophet] were in their midst, nor would He punish them so long as they sought forgiveness. 33 And why should Allah not punish them, when they have barred others from the Sacred Mosque, although they were not its guardians? Its only guardians are the cautious, though most of them do not know. 34 And their prayer before the House is nothing but whistling and clapping of hands; taste then the chastisement, for you disbelieved. 35 Those who disbelieve spend their possessions on turning men away from God. They will go on spending and rue it in the end, and will be subdued. But those who remain disbelievers shall be gathered into Hell 36 so that God might separate the bad from the good, and join the bad with one another, and link them all together [within His condemnation,] and then place them in hell. They, they are the lost! 37