and Pharaoh rebelled against the apostle, whereupon We took him to task with a crushing grip.

O you who have attained to faith! Do not deprive your charitable deeds of all worth by stressing your own benevolence and hurting [the feelings of the needy], as does he who spends his wealth only to be seen and praised by men, and believes not in God and the Last Day: for his parable is that of a smooth rock with [a little] earth upon it - and then a rainstorm smites it and leaves it hard and bare. Such as these shall have no gain whatever from all their [good] works: for God does not guide people who refuse to acknowledge the truth.

And the parable of those who spend their possessions out of a longing to please God, and out of their own inner certainty, is that of a garden on high, fertile ground: a rainstorm smites it, and thereupon it brings forth its fruit twofold; and if no rainstorm smites it, soft rain [falls upon it]. And God sees all that you do.

O you who have attained to faith! Kill no game while you are in the state of pilgrimage. And whoever of you kills it intentionally,* [shall make] amends in cattle equivalent to what he has killed - with two persons of probity giving their judgment thereon- to be brought as an offering to the Ka`bah;* or else he may atone for his sin by feeding the needy, or by the equivalent thereof in fasting:* [this,] in order that. he taste the full gravity of his deed, [while] God shall have effaced the past. But whoever does it again, God will inflict His retribution on him: for God is almighty, an avenger of evil.

[To both kinds of your enemies, O believers, is bound to happen]* the like of [what happened to] those who, a short while before them, had to taste the evil that came from their own doings,* with [yet more] grievous suffering awaiting them [in the life to come]:

HAVE THE STORIES of those who, in earlier times, refused to acknowledge the truth never yet come within your ken? [They denied it -] and so they had to taste the evil outcome of their own doings,* with [more] grievous suffering awaiting them [in the life to come]:

and thus they had to taste the evil outcome of their own doing:* for, [in this world,] the end of their doings was ruin,