Tell My servants, (O Muhammad), to say always that which is best. Verily it is Satan who sows discord among people. Satan indeed is an open enemy to mankind. 53 Your Lord knows you best. He will have mercy on you if He wills and chastise you if He wills. We have not sent you, (O Muhammad), as an overseer over them. 54 Your Lord knows very well all who are in the heavens and the earth. We have preferred some Prophets above others, and to David We gave the Psalms. 55 Say: "Call those whom you imagine to be gods besides Him; yet they have no power to relieve you of any distress or to avert it." 56 The devoted bondmen whom these disbelievers worship, themselves seek the means of proximity from their Lord, that who among them is the closest (to his Lord), and hope for His mercy and fear His punishment; indeed the punishment of your Lord is to be feared. 57 There is not a population but We shall destroy it before the Day of Judgment or punish it with a dreadful Penalty: that is written in the (eternal) Record. 58 Nothing could stop Us from sending signs except that the earlier people had rejected them as lies. We sent to Thamud the she-camel as a token to make it clear to them, but they treated her cruelly; and We send signs only to deter. 59 When We said to you: "Verily your Lord circumscribes mankind," and showed you the vision and the accursed tree of the Qur'an, it was as a bone of contention for men. Thus do We (instil) fear in them; but they only transgress the more. 60