The Cave (Al-Kahf)
In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful
ALL PRAISE is due to God, who has bestowed this divine writ from on high upon His servant, and has not allowed any deviousness to obscure its meaning: 1 right, to warn of great violence from Him, and to give good tidings unto the believers, who do righteous deeds, that theirs shall be a goodly wage 2 wherein they shall remain forever, 3 Furthermore, [this divine writ is meant] to warn all those who assert, "God has taken unto Himself a son." 4 They have no knowledge of it, nor had their fathers; a grievous word it is that comes out of their mouths; they speak nothing but a lie. 5 Thou wouldst only, perchance, fret thyself to death, following after them, in grief, if they believe not in this Message. 6 We have appointed all that is on the earth an adornment for it, in order that We try which of them is finest in works. 7 and, verily, [in time] We shall reduce all that is on it to barren dust! 8 [AND SINCE the life of this world is but a test, dost thou [really] think that [the parable of] the Men of the Cave and of [their devotion to] the scriptures could be deemed more wondrous than any [other] of Our messages? 9 When those youths took refuge in the cave, they prayed: "O our Sustainer! Bestow on us grace from Thyself, and endow us, whatever our [outward] condition, with consciousness of what is right!" 10 So We prevented them from hearing in the cave for a number of years. 11 Then We woke them up again so that We might see which of the two groups would better calculate the time they had stayed there. 12