2بَلِ الَّذينَ كَفَروا في عِزَّةٍ وَشِقاقٍMuhammad AsadBut nay - they who are bent on denying the truth are lost in [false] pride, and [hence] deeply in the wrong.1I.e., they refuse to acknowledge the fact of divine revelation because such an acknowledgment would imply an admission of man's responsibility to God - and this their false pride, manifested in their arrogant belief in man's "self-sufficiency", does not allow them to do. The same idea is expressed in 16:22 and, in a more general way, in 2:206. Cf. also 96:6-7.