The Quran

أَلَم يَأتِكُم نَبَأُ الَّذينَ كَفَروا مِن قَبلُ فَذاقوا وَبالَ أَمرِهِم وَلَهُم عَذابٌ أَليمٌ

Muhammad Asad

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,¹ with [more] grievous suffering awaiting them [in the life to come]:

This is an allusion to the disasters and the suffering which, as history shows, inevitably befall a community or nation bent on rejecting the basic ethical truths and, thus, all standards of morality.