Ali Quli Qarai, The Qur’ān with a Phrase-by-Phrase English Translation (2005)
nor find help,
and whoever of you does wrong,
We shall make him taste a terrible punishment.
20 We did not send any apostles before you
but that they indeed ate food
and walked in marketplaces.
We have made you a trial for one another,
[to see] if you will be patient,
and your Lord is all-seeing.
21 Those who do not expect to encounter Us say,
‘Why have angels not been sent down to us,
or why do we not see our Lord?’
Certainly they are full of arrogance within their souls
and have become terribly defiant.
22 The day when they see the angels,
there will be no good news for the guilty that day,
and they 1 will say, ‘Keep off [from paradise]!’
23 Then We shall attend to the works they have done
and then turn them into scattered dust.
24 On that day the inhabitants of paradise
will be in the best abode
and an excellent resting place.
25 The day when the sky with its clouds will split open,
and the angels will be sent down [in a majestic] descent,
1 That is, the angels, who will say this to the faithless. According to another interpretation, during pre-Islamic days, whenever, during one of the holy months in which warfare was prohibited by custom, an Arab felt threatened by someone belonging to a belligerent tribe, he would say, Ḥijran maḥjūrā, thus telling the member of the hostile tribe to keep distance by appealing to the sanctity of the holy month. On this basis, it is the faithless who ask the angels to keep off.
