The Qur'an Sura LXX — THE STEPS OR ASCENTS
1A SUITOR sued for punishment to light suddenly
2On the infidels: none can hinder
3God from inflicting it, the master of those ASCENTS,
4By which the angels and the spirit ascend to him in a day, whose length is fifty thousand years.
5Be thou patient therefore with becoming patience;
6They forsooth regard that day as distant,
7But we see it nigh:
8The day when the heavens shall become as molten brass,
9And the mountains shall become like flocks of wool:
10And friend shall not question of friend,
11Though they look at one another. Fain would the wicked redeem himself from punishment on that day at the price of his children,
12Of his spouse and his brother,
13And of his kindred who shewed affection for him,
14And of all who are on the earth that then it might deliver him.
15But no. For the fire,
16Dragging by the scalp,
17Shall claim him who turned his back and went away,
18And amassed and hoarded.
19Man truly is by creation hasty;
20When evil befalleth him, impatient;
21But when good falleth to his lot, tenacious.
22Not so the prayerful,
23Who are ever constant at their prayers;
24And of whose substance there is a due and stated portion
25For him who asketh, and for him who is ashamed to beg;
26And who own the judgment-day a truth,
27And who thrill with dread at the chastisement of their Lord–
28For there is none safe from the chastisement of their Lord–
29And who control their desires,
30(Save with their wives or the slaves whom their right hands have won, for there they shall be blameless;
31But whoever indulge their desires beyond this are transgressors);
32And who are true to their trusts and their engagements,
33And who witness uprightly,
34And who keep strictly the hours of prayer:
35These shall dwell, laden with honours, amid gardens.
36But what hath come to the unbelievers that they run at full stretch around thee,
37On the right hand and on the left, in bands?
38Is it that every man of them would fain enter that garden of delights?
39Not at all. We have created them, they know of what.
40It needs not that I swear by the Lord of the East and of the West that we have power.
41To replace them with better than themselves: neither are we to be hindered.
42Wherefore let them flounder on and disport them, till they come face to face with their threatened day,
43The day on which they shall flock up out of their graves in haste like men who rally to a standard:–
44Their eyes downcast; disgrace shall cover them. Such their threatened day.
Suras are in the standard order; verse divisions follow Rodwell's 1861 edition and do not always match the standard ayah numbering.