What Their Ending Was

The second is: what comes at last of those who are arrogant and who work these harms and troubles — what is their ending? In all of these accounts their ending is spoken of; in many of them it is set out. So verse 72, for instance:

Fa-anjaynāhu wa-lladhīna maʿahu bi-raḥmatin minnā wa-qaṭaʿnā dābira alladhīna kadhdhabū bi-āyātinā wa-mā kānū muʾminīn. And again there is fa-anjaynāhu wa-ahlahu, concerning Ṣāliḥ (peace be upon him) or Lūṭ (peace be upon him):

We gave him safety, We delivered him and his family — except his wife. She was corrupt, though she had a prophet for a husband. Kānat mina al-ghābirīn. Wa-amṭarnā ʿalayhim: We rained down upon them. So the evil end of those who do wrong is set out.

Thereafter we are told that one of the things to be learned from all of this is that it does take time for persecution to cease, for difficulties to end, for good to come, and for ease and smoothness to be realised. It does take time. In the sunnah of Allah, in the way of Allah, it is so. But there is no darkness in it: the heart will be illuminated. The more difficulties a man passes through, once he is past the threshold, the more he will begin to feel it. And the next point is that it reiterates also the truthfulness of the Prophet's (peace be upon him) risālah. And finally, there is much other counsel to be taken from it, from the difficulties faced and the rest.