Tell My bondmen to speak that which is kindlier. Lo! the devil soweth discord among them. Lo! the devil is for man an open foe. 53 Your Lord knows better than you (people). He will have mercy on you or will punish you as He wills. We have not sent you to watch over them. Your Lord knows best about those in the heavens and the earth. 54 And thine Lord is the Best Knower of those who are in the heavens and the earth. And assuredly We have preferred some prophets over some others: and We vouchsafed unto Daud a Scripture. 55 Say: 'Call to those whom you assert, other than Him. They have neither the power to remove your affliction nor to transfer it' 56 Those unto whom they cry seek the way of approach to their Lord, which of them shall be the nearest; they hope for His mercy and they fear His doom. Lo! the doom of thy Lord is to be shunned. 57 There is no village except that it shall be destroyed or that We will punish it with a stern punishment before the Day of Resurrection. That is inscribed in the Book. 58 And nothing has prevented Us from sending [this message, like the earlier ones,] with miraculous signs [in its wake,] save [Our knowledge] that the people of olden times [only too often] gave the lie to them: thus, We provided for [the tribe of] Thamud the she-camel as a light-giving portent, and they sinned against it. And never did We send those signs for any other purpose than to convey a warning. 59 And when We said to thee, 'Surely thy Lord encompasses men,' and We made the vision that We showed thee and the tree cursed in the Koran to be only a trial for men; and We frighten them, but it only increases them in great insolence. 60