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And strike, draw, for them, your people, the similitude of the life of this world (mathala'l-hayāti'l-dunyā constitutes the first direct object) as water (ka-mā'in, the second direct object) which We send down out from the heaven, and the vegetation of the earth mingles with it, [the vegetation] multiplies by the sending down of the water; or it is that the water mixes with the vegetation such that it is nourished and flourishes; and it then becomes, the vegetation becomes, chaff, dried up, its [various] parts [broken up] in fragments, scattered, strewn and dispersed, by the winds, which then blow it away. The import is: [the life of] this world is likened to flourishing vegetation which then becomes dry, is broken up and scattered by the winds (a variant reading [for riyāh, 'winds'] has rīh). And Allahu ta’ālā is Omnipotent, Powerful, over all things.