۞ And remember thou the brother of the Aad when We warned his people in the sandhills - and surely there have passed away warners before him and after him - saying: worship none save Allah, verily I fear for you the torment of a mighty Day. 21 They said, "Have you come to turn us away from our gods? Show us that with which you threaten us if you are truthful". 22 He said, "God alone knows when it will come, and I deliver to you the message with which I am sent, but I see you are a people who are ignorant." 23 Then, when they saw it as a sudden cloud coming towards their valleys, they said, 'This is a cloud, that shall give us rain!' 'Not so; rather it is that you sought to hasten -- a wind, wherein is a painful chastisement, 24 It shall annihilate everything by the command of its Lord. Wherefore they became such that naught could be seen save their dwellings Thus We requite a nation of the culprits. 25 We had established them firmly in a manner We have not established you. We had given them ears and eyes and hearts. But nothing availed them -- neither their ears, nor their eyes, nor their hearts, for they denied the Signs of Allah. Then what they had mocked at encompassed them. 26