۞ Remember (Hud) the brother of 'Ad. When he warned his people in Ahqaf -- though many a warner had come and gone before and after him: "Do not worship any one but God, for I fear the punishment of an awful day for you," 21 but they said, "Have you come to us to turn us away from our deities? Then bring down upon us what you threaten us with, 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 And so, when they beheld it in the shape of a dense cloud approaching their valleys, they exclaimed, "This is but a heavy cloud which will bring us [welcome] rain!" [But Hud said:] "Nay, but it is the very thing which you [so contemptuously] sought to hasten - a wind bearing grievous suffering, 24 Destroying everything by the Command of its Lord! So they became such that nothing could be seen except their dwellings! Thus do We recompense the people who are Mujrimun (polytheists, disbelievers, sinners, etc.)! 25 And yet, We had established them securely in a manner in which We have never established you, [O people of later times;] and We had endowed them with hearing, and sight, and [knowledgeable] hearts: but neither their hearing, nor their sight, nor their hearts were of the least avail to them, seeing that they went on rejecting God's messages; and [in the end] they were overwhelmed by the very thing which they had been wont to deride. 26