Ali Quli Qarai, The Qur’ān with a Phrase-by-Phrase English Translation (2005)
and whomever Allah leads astray, has no guide.
24 What! Is someone who fends off with his face
the terrible punishment [meted out to him]
on the Day of Resurrection?1
And the wrongdoers will be told,
‘Taste what you used to earn.’
25 Those who were before them impugned [the apostles],
whereat the punishment overtook them
whence they were not aware.
26 So Allah made them taste disgrace
in the life of the world,
and the punishment of the Hereafter will surely
be greater, had they known.
27 Certainly we have drawn for mankind
in this Qur’ān
every [kind of] example,
so that they may take admonition
28 — an Arabic Qur’ān, without any deviousness,
so that they may be Godwary.
29 Allah draws an example:
a man jointly owned by several contending masters,
and a man belonging entirely to one man:
are the two equal in comparison?2
All praise belongs to Allah!
But most of them do not know.
1 Ellipsis. The omitted phrase is, ‘like someone who is secure from any kind of punishment?’
2 The parable compares the polytheist with the monotheist. The worshipper of multiple deities is likened to a slave trying to please several masters.
