قَالُوا۟ رَبُّنَا يَعْلَمُ إِنَّآ إِلَيْكُمْ لَمُرْسَلُونَ
Qaaloo Rabbunaa ya'lamu innaaa ilaikum lamursaloon
They said, "Our Lord knows that we have indeed been sent to you,
The messengers say their sentence a second time, and a single letter separates it from the first: at verse 14 they state that they have been sent, and here the identical words carry the emphatic lam Arabic reaches for under oath. What they place in front of it is that their Lord knows, which grants that the claim cannot be settled between the two parties and appeals to a witness the town has no way to question.