1. By the Dawn

2. And ten nights,

3. And the Even and the Odd,

4. And the night when it departeth,

5. There surely is an oath for thinking man.

6. Dost thou not consider how thy Lord dealt with the tribe of Od,

7. With many-columned Aram,

8. The like of which was not created in the lands;

9. And with the tribe of Shamod, who clove the rocks in the valley;

10. And with Pharaoh, firm of might,

11. Who all were rebellious to God in these lands,

12. And multiplied iniquity therein?

13. Therefore thy Lord poured on them the disaster of His punishment.

14. Lo! thy Lord is ever watchful.

15. As for man, whenever his Lord trieth him by honouring him, and is gracious unto him, he saith: My Lord honoureth me.

16. But whenever He trieth him by straitening his means of life, he saith: My Lord despiseth me.

17. Nay, but ye for your part honour not the orphan

18. And urge not on the feeding of the poor.

19. And ye devour heritages with devouring greed.

20. And love wealth with abounding love.

21. Nay, but when the earth is ground to atoms, grinding, grinding,

22. And thy Lord shall come with angels, rank on rank,

23. And hell is brought near that day; on that day man will remember, but how will the remembrance then avail him?

24. He will say: Ah, would that I had sent before me some provision for my life!

25. None punisheth as He will punish on that day!

5 more verses…

About this reader

What is Scripture?

Scripture is a browser-based reader for sixteen sacred texts spanning multiple religious and literary traditions. It provides chapter-by-chapter navigation, full-text search across all works, word concordance with frequency analysis, verse-linked notes, text-to-speech, and deep linking to any chapter or verse.

Traditions Represented

The collection spans Abrahamic, East Asian, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, and Nordic traditions. Christian texts include the King James Version Old and New Testaments (1611) and Apocrypha. The Quran uses Marmaduke Pickthall's 1930 English translation. Latter-day Saint scripture includes the Book of Mormon (1830), Doctrine and Covenants (1835), and Pearl of Great Price (1851).

Confucian works include James Legge's translations of The Four Books (1893) and the Book of Poetry (1876). The Tao Te Ching uses Legge's 1891 translation. The Kojiki uses Basil Hall Chamberlain's 1919 English translation. Zoroastrian texts include the Bundahishn (E. W. West, 1880) and the Arda Viraf (Haug & West, 1872). The Lotus Sutra uses Hendrik Kern's 1884 translation. The Finnish Kalevala uses John Martin Crawford's 1888 translation, and the Norse Poetic Edda uses Henry Adams Bellows' 1923 translation.

Public Domain Translations

Every translation in this collection is in the public domain. The most recent translation dates to 1930 (Pickthall's Quran). All texts are freely available for reading, study, quotation, and redistribution with no copyright restrictions.

Concordance and Related Passages

The concordance indexes every word across all sixteen works, showing frequency and distribution. TF-IDF (term frequency-inverse document frequency) scoring identifies passages with similar vocabulary across different traditions, enabling comparative study without requiring prior knowledge of each text's structure. TF-IDF weights words that are frequent in one chapter but rare across the corpus, surfacing meaningful thematic connections rather than common function words.

Deep Linking

Every chapter and verse has a permanent URL. Chapter links follow the pattern /scripture/{work}/{book}-{chapter} (e.g., /scripture/ot/gen-1 for Genesis 1). Verse links append the verse number (e.g., /scripture/ot/gen-1:26 for Genesis 1:26). These URLs can be shared, bookmarked, or cited directly.

Accessibility

Scripture supports keyboard navigation throughout: Tab moves between controls, Enter activates verse actions, and arrow keys navigate chapters. The reading pane has a skip-to-content link. All overlays (search, concordance) are focus-trapped ARIA dialogs. Dynamic content regions use aria-live for screen reader announcements. High-contrast mode is available via the theme toggle. Verse numbers are visible to assistive technology. No flashing content or motion hazards.

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