“Whoever plants thorns will not reap grapes from them.”

The proverb underneath is pre-Islamic: “you will not gather grapes from thorns,” which Abu Hilal al-‘Askari credits to the sage Aktham ibn Sayfi in his collection of Arab proverbs, explaining it as a warning that whoever wrongs others should expect to be repaid in kind. A later poet set it in the line quoted here. The Qur’an states the same law without a metaphor: whoever does an atom’s weight of evil will see it.