“To Him alone is referred the knowledge of the Hour. No fruit emerges from its sheaths, nor does any female conceive or give birth except with His knowledge. And on the Day He will call to them, ‘Where are My partners?’ They will say, ‘We declare to You that none of us can testify to this.’ (47)”

“And We certainly gave Moses the Book, but it was disputed”: some believed and others denied, just as your people have differed concerning your Book. “Had it not been for a prior decree from your Lord”—to defer the punishment of those who deny the Quran—“judgment would have been passed between them”: He would have completed their punishment and hastened their destruction. “Yet they are surely in troubling doubt concerning it”: concerning your truthfulness, a doubt that causes them uncertainty.

“Whoever does what is righteous, it is for his own soul; and whoever does evil, it is against it. And your Lord is not unjust to His servants.”

“To Him alone is referred the knowledge of the Hour”: that is, when one is asked about it, knowledge of it is referred back to Him; no one besides Him knows it. “No fruit emerges from its sheaths”: the people of Medina and Syria, and Hafs, recited it in the plural, “fruits,” whereas the others recited