Ali Quli Qarai, The Qur’ān with a Phrase-by-Phrase English Translation (2005)

‘Have you come to turn us away from our gods?
Then bring us what you threaten us with,
should you be truthful.
23 He said,
‘The knowledge is with Allah alone.
I communicate to you what I have been sent with.
But I see that you are a senseless lot.’
24 When they saw it as a cloud
advancing toward their valleys,
they said, ‘This cloud brings us rain.’
‘Rather it is what you sought to hasten:
a hurricane carrying a painful punishment,
25 destroying everything by its Lord’s command.’
So they became such that nothing could be seen
except their dwellings.
Thus do We requite the guilty lot.
26 Certainly We had granted them power
in respects that We have not granted you,
and We had vested them with hearing and sight
and hearts.
But neither their hearing availed them
nor did their sight,
nor their hearts, in any way
when they used to impugn the signs of Allah.
So they were besieged
by what they used to deride.
27 Certainly We destroyed towns that were around you,
and We have paraphrased the signs
so that they may come back.
28 So why did not those [false gods] help them