Or is he who (read, softened, a-man) devotes himself [in worship], observing duties of obedience, in the watches of the night, [during] its hours, prostrating and standing, in prayer, apprehensive of the [eventuality of the] Hereafter, in other words, fearing its chastisement, and hoping for the mercy, the Paradise, of his Lord … ?, like one who is disobedient through disbelief or otherwise? (a variant reading has am-man, pronouncing the hamza, so that am has the sense of bal, ‘rather’). Say: ‘Are those who know equal with those who do not know?’, in other words, they are not equal, just as the person of knowledge is not equal to the ignorant one. Only people of pith, possessors of intellect, remember, [only they] are admonished.