﴿ ظَهَرَ ٱلْفَسَادُ فِى ٱلْبَرِّ وَٱلْبَحْرِ بِمَا كَسَبَتْ أَيْدِى ٱلنَّاسِ لِيُذِيقَهُم بَعْضَ ٱلَّذِى عَمِلُوا۟ لَعَلَّهُمْ يَرْجِعُونَ ﴾

“[Since they have become oblivious of God,] corruption has appeared on land and in the sea as an outcome of what men’s hands have wrought: and so He will let them taste [the evil of] some of their doings, so that they might return [to the right path].”

Corruption has appeared on land in the wastelands because of the rain being withheld and the vegetation diminishing and on sea in lands near rivers because of their waters diminishing because of what people’s hands have perpetrated of acts of disobedience that He may make them taste li-yudhīqahum; or may be read li-nudhīqahum ‘that We may make them taste’ something of what they have done that is the punishment for it that perhaps they may repent.