15 Preface مَن كانَ يَظُنُّ أَن لَن يَنصُرَهُ اللَّهُ فِي الدُّنيا وَالآخِرَةِ فَليَمدُد بِسَبَبٍ إِلَى السَّماءِ ثُمَّ ليَقطَع فَليَنظُر هَل يُذهِبَنَّ كَيدُهُ ما يَغيظُYusuf AliIf any think that God will not help him (His Messenger. in this world and the Hereafter, let him stretch out a rope to the ceiling and cut (himself)1 off: then let him see whether his plan will remove that which enrages (him)!There is some difference of opinion as to the interpretation of this verse. Most Commentators are agreed that the pronoun “him” in the second line (“will not help him”) refers to the Prophet, and that the “any” in the first line refers to his enemies, who wished to see him destroyed and removed from the scene of his labours, Ibn 'Abbas, whom I have followed here, and whom a great number of Commentators follow, construes the later clauses in the sense given in the text. Freely paraphrased, it means: if the enemies of God’s Messenger are enraged at his successes, let them fix a rope to their ceiling and hang themselves. Sama 1 is thus rendered by the word “ceiling”. If Sama'' is rendered by the word “heaven” (the usual meaning), the paraphrase would be: if the enemies of God’s Messenger are enraged at the help he gets from heavens, let them stretch a rope to heaven and see if they can cut off the help that way!-in other words, they are fools if they think they can intercept God’s help by their petty devices!