25 Preface تُدَمِّرُ كُلَّ شَيءٍ بِأَمرِ رَبِّها فَأَصبَحوا لا يُرىٰ إِلّا مَساكِنُهُم ۚ كَذٰلِكَ نَجزِي القَومَ المُجرِمينَYusuf Ali“Everything will it destroy by the command of its Lord!” Then by the morning they -1 nothing was to be seen but (the ruins of) their houses! thus do We recompense those given to sin!Here is the figure of speech known in rhetoric as aposiopesis, to heighten the effect of the suddenness and completeness of the calamity. In the Arabic text, the verb asbahu, in the diird person plural, leads us to expect that we shall be told what they were doing in the morning. But no! They had been wiped out, and any small remnant had fled (see n, 1040 to 7:65). Nothing was to be seen but the ruins of their houses.