HKB
Whether ye bring a matter to the light or hide it, God truly hath knowledge of all things.
No blame shall attach to them (your wives) for speaking to their fathers unveiled, or to their sons, or to their brothers, or to their brothers' sons, or to their sisters' sons, or to their women, or to the slaves whom their right hands hold. And fear ye God: for God witnesseth all things.
Verily, God and His Angels bless the Prophet! Bless ye Him, O Believers, and salute Him with salutations of Peace.
Verily, they who affront God and His Apostle, the curse of God is on them in this world, and in the world to come: and He hath prepared for them a shameful chastisement.
And they who shall affront believing men and believing women, for no fault of theirs, they shall surely bear the guilt of slander, and of a clear wrong.
O Prophet! speak to thy wives and to thy daughters,25 and to the wives of the Faithful, that they let their veils fall low. Thus will they more easily be known, and they will not be affronted. God is Indulgent, Merciful!
If the Hypocrites, and the men of tainted heart, and the stirrers of sedition in Medina desist not, we will surely stir thee up against them. Then shall they not be suffered to dwell near thee therein, but a little while:
Cursed wherever they are found; they shall be seized and slain with slaughter!
Such hath been the way of God with those who lived before them; and no change canst thou find in the way of God.
Men will ask thee of "the Hour." SAY: The knowledge of it is with God alone: and who can tell thee whether haply the Hour be not nigh at hand?
Verily, God hath cursed the Infidels, and hath got ready for them the flame:
For aye shall they abide therein; none to befriend them, no helper shall they find!
On the day when their faces shall be rolled in the fire, they shall cry: "Oh! would that we had obeyed God, and obeyed the Apostle!"
And they shall say: "Oh our Lord! indeed we obeyed our chiefs and our great ones, and they misled us from the way of God–
O our Lord! give them a double chastisement, and curse them with a heavy curse."
O Believers! be not like those who affronted Moses.26 But God cleared him from what they said of him, and of God was he highly esteemed.
O Believers! fear God, and speak with well-guided speech.
That God may bless your doings for you, and forgive you your sins. And whoso obeyeth God and His Apostle with great bliss shall be blessed.
Verily, we proposed to the Heavens, and to the Earth, and to the Mountains to receive the Faith, but they refused the burden, and they feared to receive it. Man undertook to bear it, but hath proved unjust, senseless!
Therefore will God punish the hypocritical men and the hypocritical women, and the men and the women who join gods with God; but to the believing men and women will God turn him: for God is Indulgent, Merciful!
1 Medina was besieged, when this Sura was revealed, by certain confederate tribes at the instigation of the Jews, an. Hej. 5. The first nine verses, however, have no immediate reference to this event, but to Muhammad's cotemporary marriage with Zeinab. See below, verse 37.
2 The Arabians had been accustomed, before the time of Muhammad, to divorce their wives with the words,–thy back be to me as the back of my mother. The drift and motive of this passage is explained by verse 37 below. It had also been the custom to hold adopted sons to be as nearly related to them as their natural ones. See Sura lviii. 2, p. 451.
3 The Mohadjers–those who had emigrated with Muhammad from Mecca. This verse abrogates Sura [xcv.] viii. 73.
4 How they have discharged their prophetic functions.