The Quran

ارجِع إِلَيهِم فَلَنَأتِيَنَّهُم بِجُنودٍ لا قِبَلَ لَهُم بِها وَلَنُخرِجَنَّهُم مِنها أَذِلَّةً وَهُم صاغِرونَ

Muhammad Asad

"Go thou back unto them [that have sent thee]! For, [God says:] 'We shall most certainly come upon them with forces which they will never be able to withstand, and shall most certainly cause them to be driven from that [land of theirs], despicable and humbled'!'"¹

Lit., "and they will be humbled". Since the Qur'an explicitly prohibits all wars of aggression (see 2:190-194 and the corresponding notes), it is not plausible that this same Qur'an should place a crude threat of warlike aggression in the mouth of a prophet. We must, therefore, assume that here again, as in verse 31 above, it is God who, through His prophet, warns the people of Sheba of His "coming upon them" - i.e., punishing them - unless they abandon their blasphemous belief that they "ought not" to worship God. This interpretation finds considerable support in the sudden change from the singular in which Solomon speaks of himself in the preceding (as well as in the subsequent) verses, to the majestic plural "We" appearing in the above sentence.