32كَلّا وَالقَمَرِMuhammad AsadNAY, but consider the moon!1This is the earliest Qur'anic instance of the adjurative particle wa used in the sense of a solemn, oathlike assertion - a calling to witness, as it were - meant (as in the expression "by God!") to give weight to a subsequently stated truth or evidence of the truth: hence, I am rendering it here and elsewhere as "consider". In the present case, the truth thus to be stressed is the implied statement that just as the changing phases of the moon and the alternation of night and day are the outcome of God-given, natural laws, so, too, a sinner's suffering in the hereafter is but a natural outcome of his deliberate wrongdoing in this world. (See also note 7 on 2:7.)