The Quran

وَإِذ قُلنا لِلمَلائِكَةِ اسجُدوا لِآدَمَ فَسَجَدوا إِلّا إِبليسَ كانَ مِنَ الجِنِّ فَفَسَقَ عَن أَمرِ رَبِّهِ ۗ أَفَتَتَّخِذونَهُ وَذُرِّيَّتَهُ أَولِياءَ مِن دوني وَهُم لَكُم عَدُوٌّ ۚ بِئسَ لِلظّالِمينَ بَدَلًا

Muhammad Asad

AND [remember that] when We told the angels, "Prostrate yourselves before Adam,"¹ they all prostrated themselves, save Iblis: he [too] was one of those invisible beings,² but then he turned away from his Sustainer's command. Will you, then, take him and his cohorts³ for [your], masters instead of Me, although they are your foe? How vile an exchange on the evildoers' part!⁴

This short reference to the oft-repeated allegory of God's command to the angels to "prostrate themselves before Adam" is meant, in the above context, to stress man's inborn faculty of conceptual thinking (see 2:31-34 and the corresponding notes) and, thus, his ability and obligation to discern between right and wrong. Since man's deliberate choice of a morally wrong course - of which the preceding passages speak - is almost invariably due to his exaggerated attachment to the allurements of worldly life, attention is drawn here to the fact that this attachment is the means by which Satan (or Iblis) induces man to forgo all moral considerations and thus brings about his spiritual ruin.
Denoting, in this instance, the angels (see Appendix III).
Lit., "his offspring" - a metonym for all who follow him.
Lit., "for the evildoers". As regards Satan's symbolic "rebellion" against God, see note 26 on 2:34 and note 31 on 15:41.