۞ Say: 'What, do you disbelieve in Him who created the earth in two days, and do you set up compeers to Him? That is the Lord of all Being. 9 He placed therein (i.e. the earth) firm mountains from above it, and He blessed it, and measured therein its sustenance (for its dwellers) in four Days equal (i.e. all these four 'days' were equal in the length of time), for all those who ask (about its creation). 10 And He [it is who] applied His design to the skies, which were [yet but] smoke; and He [it is who] said to them and to the earth, "Come [into being,] both of you, willingly or unwillingly!" - to which both responded, "We do come in obedience." 11 And He [it is who] decreed that they become seven heavens in two aeons, and imparted unto each heaven its function. And We adorned the skies nearest to the earth with lights, and made them secure: such is the ordaining of the Almighty, the All-Knowing. 12 Then if they turn away say, “I warn you of a thunderbolt like the thunderbolt which came upon A’ad and Thamud.” 13 When their Noble Messengers approached them from front and from behind saying, "Do not worship any one except Allah"; they said, "If our Lord willed, He would surely have sent down angels – we therefore deny whatever you have been sent with.” 14 As for Aad, they behaved proudly in the earth without right. 'Who is stronger than us?' they would say. Could they not see that Allah, who created them, is stronger than they? But they disbelieved Our signs. 15 and thereupon We let loose upon them a storm wind raging through days of misfortune, so as to give them, in the life of this world, a foretaste of suffering through humiliation: but [their] suffering in the life to come will be far more humiliating, and they will have none to succour them. 16 As for the (tribe of) Thamud, We tried to guide them, but they preferred blindness to guidance; then they were seized by the torment of a humiliating punishment as requital for their misdeeds; 17 and We saved [only] those who had attained to faith and were conscious of Us. 18