وَكَأَيِّن مِّن قَرْيَةٍ عَتَتْ عَنْ أَمْرِ رَبِّهَا وَرُسُلِهِۦ فَحَاسَبْنَـٰهَا حِسَابًا شَدِيدًا وَعَذَّبْنَـٰهَا عَذَابًا نُّكْرًا
Wa ka ayyim min qaryatin 'atat 'an amri Rabbihaa wa Rusulihee fahaasabnaahaa hisaaban shadeedanw wa 'azzabnaahaa 'azaaban nukraa
Ileż to miast zachowało się dumnie wobec rozkazu Boga i Jego posłańców! I My policzyliśmy się z nimi rachunkiem surowym; ukaraliśmy je karą straszną.
How many a town defied the command of its Lord and his messengers, so we called it to a severe reckoning and punished it with a dreadful punishment.
The turn here is abrupt by design: seven verses of household regulation about housing, provision and nursing payments, and then whole towns. What joins them is the word amr, the command, which governed those rules and is what the towns set themselves against. ʿAtat describes a hardened refusal rather than a lapse, and nukr, from the root for what is unrecognized, makes the punishment something no one had seen before.