Ali Quli Qarai, The Qur’ān with a Phrase-by-Phrase English Translation (2005)
as [We treat] the guilty?
36 What is the matter with you? How do you judge!
37 Do you possess a scripture in which you read
38 that you shall indeed have in it 1
whatever you would like?
39 Do you have a pledge binding on Us
until the Day of Resurrection,
that you shall indeed have whatever you decide?
40 Ask them, which of them will aver [any of] that!
41 Do they have any partners [they ascribe to Allah]?
Then let them produce their partners, if they are truthful.
42 The day when the catastrophe occurs,2
and they are summoned to prostrate themselves,
they will not be able [to do it].
43 With a humbled look [in their eyes],
they will be overcast by abasement.
Certainly they were summoned to prostrate themselves
while they were yet sound.
44 So leave Me with those who deny this discourse.
We will draw them imperceptibly [into ruin],
whence they do not know.
45 I will grant them respite,
for My devising is indeed sure.
46 Do you ask them for a reward,
so that they are weighed down with debt?
47 Do they possess [access to] the Unseen
1 That is, in the next world.
2 Literally, ‘when the shank is uncovered,’ an idiom implying the occurrence of a calamity, or a disclosure and denouement.
