۞ AND REMEMBER that brother of [the tribe of] Ad, how - seeing that [other] warnings had already come and gone within his own knowledge as well as in times beyond his ken - he warned his people [who lived] among those sand-dunes: "Worship none but God! Verily, I fear lest suffering befall you on an awesome day!" 21 They said, "Have you come to turn us away from our gods? Show us that with which you threaten us if you are truthful". 22 He said: the knowledge is only with Allah, and I preach unto you that wherewith I have been sent, but I see you are a people given to ignorance. 23 When they saw the scourge advancing towards their valleys, they said: “This is a cloud that will bring much rain to us.” “By no means; it is what you had sought to hasten -- a wind-storm bearing a grievous chastisement 24 “That destroys all things by the command of its Lord” – so at morning none could be seen except their empty houses; this is the sort of punishment We mete out to the guilty. 25 And We had certainly established them in such as We have not established you, and We made for them hearing and vision and hearts. But their hearing and vision and hearts availed them not from anything [of the punishment] when they were [continually] rejecting the signs of Allah; and they were enveloped by what they used to ridicule. 26