Ali Quli Qarai, The Qur’ān with a Phrase-by-Phrase English Translation (2005)
166 When they defied [the command pertaining to]
what they were forbidden from,
We said to them, ‘Be you spurned apes.’1
167 And when your Lord proclaimed
that He would surely send against them,2
until the Day of Resurrection,
those who would inflict on them a terrible punishment.
Indeed your Lord is swift in retribution,
and indeed He is all-forgiving, all-merciful.
168 We dispersed them into communities around the earth:
some of them were righteous,
and some of them otherwise,
and We tested them with good and bad [times]
so that they may come back.
169 Then they were succeeded by an evil posterity
which inherited the Book:
they grab the transitory gains of this lower world,3
and say, ‘It will be forgiven us.’
And if similar transitory gains were to come their way,
they would grab them too.
Was not the covenant of the Book taken with them
that they shall not attribute anything to Allah
except the truth?
They have studied what is in it,
and [know that] the abode of the Hereafter is better
for those who are Godwary.
Do you not apply reason?
