No sooner than We bestow mercy on a people after hardship has hit them than they begin to scheme against Our signs. Tell them: 'Allah is swifter in scheming. Our angels are recording all your intriguing. 21 It is He Who transports you over the land and the sea; to the extent that when you are in ships – and the ships sail with them with a favourable breeze and they rejoice at it – a gust of strong wind reaches them and waves come to them from every side and they realise that they are surrounded, – thereupon they pray to Allah as His sincere bondmen that, “If You rescue us from this, we will surely be thankful.” 22 But when He delivers them, lo! they are unjustly rebellious in the earth. O men! your rebellion is against your own souls-- provision (only) of this world's life-- then to Us shall be your return, so We will inform you of what you did. 23 The parable of the life of this world is but that of rain which We send down from the sky, and which is absorbed by the plants of the earth whereof men and animals draw nourishment, until - when the earth has assumed its artful adornment and has been embellished, and they who dwell on it believe that they have gained mastery over it - there comes down upon it Our judgment, by night or by day, and We cause it to become [like] a field mown down, as if there had been no yesterday. Thus clearly do We spell out these messages unto people who think! 24 And Allah summoneth to the abode of peace, and leadeth whom He will to a straight path. 25 ۞ the good-doers the reward most fair and a surplus; neither dust nor abasement shall overspread their faces. Those are the inhabitants of Paradise, therein dwelling forever. 26 As for those who have earned evil deeds, evil shall be recompensed with its like. Abasement will cover them, they shall have none to defend them from Allah as though their faces were covered with parts of the blackness of night. Those, they are the companions of the Fire, in it they shall live for ever. 27 And on the day when We raise all of them together, then say to the polytheists, “Stay in your place – you and your partners (false deities)”; so We shall separate them from the believers, and their partners will say to them, “When did you ever worship us!?” 28 And God sufficieth as witness between you and us, of your worship, we have been ever unaware. 29 There doth every soul experience that which it did aforetime, and they are returned unto Allah, their rightful Lord, and that which they used to invent hath failed them. 30