Texts of Islam

The Qur'ân, ed. Palmer (SBE9): XXVI. The Chapter of...

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This is a passage from the Qur'an (Surah Ash-Shu'ara, "The Poets"), taken from E.H. Palmer's 1880 English translation published in the Sacred Books of the East series. The text presents a series of parallel prophetic narratives: Moses confronting Pharaoh, Abraham rejecting his people's idol worship, and the stories of Noah, Hud (sent to 'Ad), Salih (sent to Thamud), Lot, and Shu'ayb (sent to the people of the Grove). Each story follows a near-identical rhetorical structure in which a prophet delivers God's message, is rejected by his people, and the disbelievers are subsequently destroyed. A distinctive feature of this surah is its insistent refrain — "verily, in that is a sign, but most of them will never be believers; and, verily, thy Lord is mighty, merciful" — repeated after each narrative as a kind of structural and theological drumbeat. The cumulative argument is that divine revelation and prophetic warning follow a consistent, recognizable pattern across history, and that human resistance to God's messengers is itself a recurring moral failure. The passage closes with a claim to the Qur'an's own divine authenticity, noting it was revealed in clear Arabic and is corroborated by earlier scriptures known to Jewish scholars.

The Qur'ân, ed. Palmer (SBE9): XXVI. The Chapter of...

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