83 Preface مُسَوَّمَةً عِندَ رَبِّكَ ۖ وَما هِيَ مِنَ الظّالِمينَ بِبَعيدٍYusuf AliMarked as from thy Lord:1 Nor are they2 ever far from those who do wrong! If we take the words literally, they would mean that the showers of brimstones were marked with the destiny of the wicked as decreed by God. But would it not be better to take them figuratively, to mean that the shower of brimstones was especially appointed in God’s Decree or Plan to mark the punishment for the crimes of Sodom and Gomorrah?They: Arabic, hiya: some Commentators take the pronoun to refer to the wicked cities so destroyed: the meaning then would be: those wicked cities were not so different from other cities that do wrong, for they would all suffer similar punishment! Perhaps it would be better to refer “they” to the stones of punishment by a metonymy for “punishment”: 'punishment would not be far from any people that did wrong.'