1. If you wish to kill the envious deliberately
Without punishment or fuel for your fire,

2. Without poison or swords,
And without your Lord's punishment that spares no one,

3. Exalt their envy right before their eyes,
And you will see them dead in spirit though living in body.

4. The metals may melt from the flames but
The envious melt from the heat of envy.

5. The breasts of the envious have a fire -
The fawn's heat in the Lion's mansion.

6. Their hearts - either embers or flames -
Bearing firewood, blazing when lit.

7. So their months are ever like the months of Nashir*
From the embers' glow within their hearts.

8. The envious do not live out their terms
For their mark is the death rattle.

9. The limit for adulterers in God's law lasts for a period,
Yet you see the envious blighted forever.

10. Whether alive or dead, he remains stingy and tortured,
Suffering in it for ever and ever.

11. He has earned enmity in both states -
Whether he dealt with throngs or was solitary.

12. He missed peace so he is forever warring
Throughout time, losing security altogether.

13. Their hallmark is either good occurred and
Their faces immediately darkened and shuddered.

14. Their ribs quivered, their hearts fluttered,
Their innards tore, and they cried for help.

15. Their souls and blood were stirred up,
Their eyelids twitched over dead pupils.

16. An obdurate, incurable disease that defies
The healers' cure, as if it were the lions' disease.

17. It attacks those who approach unless they distance themselves,
So none escapes except those who pull back.

18. A burden that rises above all prohibitions -
As vile as blindness rising above the pupil.

19. It destroyed Cain, Saul, Doeg*, and Abiram -
The fierce adversary.

20. Were it not for this, the angels would not have slipped
And been thrown down from the heavens' spheres.

21. And Adam would not have parted from Paradise humbled
To dwell on an earth whose surface is but misery.

22. And God would not have ordained for Eve
Sorrow and anguish in order to give birth.

23. Were it not for this, Joseph the noble freeman would not
Have been sold by the brothers who were his kin.

24. Were it not for this, Jesus would not have been crucified
As a criminal - from the evil of a people who disbelieved their Lord.

25. A group strayed deliberately from the path of guidance
So the chances of affection were lost, never to be regained.

26. I lament for the envious because they have taken
The wayward, ruinous road of perdition.

27. They learned of a sea with no shore,
So they drowned when its waters raged.

28. They balked at the good bestowed upon
The one they envied, even if he were most deserving of intimacy.

29. They never ceased their ferocious enmity
Even when they were given war without bounds.

30. My God, my Lord - it is a struggle without
End or number, past, present or to come.

31. A battle embedded in the soul with clamor
That veiled the light of reason however long it lasted.

32. Its bombs exploded, stirring sediment that
Extinguished the signal fires of God's blessings.

33. Had these been physical, I would beware,
But they are spiritual, beyond reproach.

34. So the sword may bend, but the sword of this
Disease does not bend - its limit is none in time.

35. And horses may trip, but the resolve of this one
Has never tripped nor ceased to saunter feebly.

36. And the flint may wane at times, but the
Fiery rancor - its flint has never chilled.

37. The sincere one slept, feeling safe forever,
While the envious one's eye has never slept.

38. So turn aside, O youth, from an envious one's advice
Even if he professes sincere advice and strives hard,

39. Pay it no heed, it being foam even if it looks like foam*
For it clots and amounts to naught.

40. My priesthood has weeded out the envious for me -
I have spurned him and my arrows of judgment held back nothing.

41. So I saw in him the traits of gossip, spite,
Scandal, gloating, and vileness.

42. He breathes heavy sighs of hatred that do not stop,
Nor diminish or vanish, ever ascending.

43. Mandating retaliation against him while alive
And dead for his shameful misdeed.

44. *Nashir: Name of a month in the pre-Islamic calendar during which it was forbidden to wage wars.
*Doeg: Envious Israelite chief who betrayed David for Saul's favor - see 1 Samuel 21-22