Say, 'Do you see yourselves, to the end [of the verse]: in other words, every committer of idolatrous association when he ends up in the chastisement or at the moment of death - if we interpret 'the Hour' as meaning the minor resurrection - or [when] the veil is removed as a result of being guided by the Truth to the true affirmation of Oneness - if we interpret it as meaning the major resurrection - [that idolater] he will dissociate from [claims made of] the power and strength of that which he associated with God and will ascertain that there is no power or strength except in God. And he will call only upon God and will forget all the agents to whom he was attached and whom he associated with God, which is why it is said that affliction is one of God's scourges by which He drives His servants. Do you not see how He follows these words of His by comparing them to the seizing with misery and hardship after the sending of messengers, that perhaps the doubling of the causes of graciousness such as the leadership of prophets and the driving [of them] through punishment might stir them from the established abodes of their souls and break their vehemence and the severity of their contemptuousness, that such a person might become obedient and emerge from the veil, and that they might then comply humbly upon the self-disclosure of the attribute of vanquishing and its impact upon them. Then He makes it clear that the reason why they did not humble themselves is because of the hardness of their hearts as a result of the density of their veil and being overpowered by the deceit of caprice and the love of this world and the inclination to corporeal pleasures.