70 - The Ascending Stairways
The Ascending Stairways
  1. A questioner asked of a chastisement about to fall
  2. for the unbelievers, which none may avert,
  3. from God, the Lord of the Stairways.
  4. To Him the angels and the Spirit mount up, in a day whereof the measure is fifty thousand years.
  5. So be thou patient with a sweet patience;
  6. behold, they see it as if far off;
  7. but We see it is nigh.
  8. Upon the day when heaven shall be as molten copper
  9. and the mountains shall be as plucked wool-tufts,
  10. no loyal friend shall question loyal friend,
  11. as they are given sight of them. The sinner will wish that he might ransom himself from the chastisement of that day even by his sons,
  12. his companion wife, his brother,
  13. his kin who sheltered him,
  14. and whosoever is in the earth, all together, so that then it might deliver him.
  15. Nay, verily it is a furnace
  16. snatching away the scalp,
  17. calling him who drew back and turned away,
  18. who amassed and hoarded.
  19. Surely man was created fretful,
  20. when evil visits him, impatient,
  21. when good visits him, grudging,
  22. save those that pray
  23. and continue at their prayers,
  24. those in whose wealth is a right known
  25. for the beggar and the outcast,
  26. who confirm the Day of Doom
  27. and go in fear of the chastisement of their Lord
  28. (from their Lord's chastisement none feels secure)
  29. and guard their private parts
  30. save from their wives and what their right hands own, then not being blameworthy
  31. (but whoso seeks after more than that, they are the transgressors),
  32. and who preserve their trusts and their covenant,
  33. and perform their witnessings,
  34. and who observe their prayers.
  35. Those shall be in Gardens, high-honoured.
  36. What ails the unbelievers, running with outstretched necks
  37. towards thee on the right hand and on the left hand in knots?
  38. What, is every man of them eager to be admitted to a Garden of Bliss?
  39. Not so; for We have created them of what they know.
  40. No! I swear by the Lord of the Easts and Wests, surely We are able
  41. to substitute a better than they; We shall not be outstripped.
  42. Then leave them alone to plunge and play until they encounter that day of theirs which they are promised,
  43. the day they shall come forth from the tombs hastily, as if they were hurrying unto a waymark,
  44. humbled their eyes, overspreading them abasement. That is the day which they were promised.