۞ And remember the brother of Ad, when he warned his people beside the sand-dunes -- and already warners had passed away alike before him and behind him -- saying, 'Serve none but God! Truly I fear for you the chastisement of a dreadful day. 21 They said: "Have you come to turn us away from our aliha (gods)? Then bring us that with which you threaten us, if you are one of the truthful!" 22 He said, 'Knowledge is only with God, and I deliver to you the Message with which I was sent; but I see you are an ignorant people.' 23 And when they saw it as a cloud approaching their valleys, they said, "This is a cloud bringing us rain!" Rather, it is that for which you were impatient: a wind, within it a painful punishment, 24 Destroying everything by command of its Lord. And they became so that nothing was seen [of them] except their dwellings. Thus do We recompense the criminal people. 25 And We had firmly established them in a (prosperity and) power which We have not given to you (ye Quraish!) and We had endowed them with (faculties of) hearing, seeing, heart and intellect: but of no profit to them were their (faculties of) hearing, sight, and heart and intellect, when they went on rejecting the Signs of Allah; and they were (completely) encircled by that which they used to mock at! 26