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 God is Omnipotent Powerful over all things.
