O you who have believed, when you intended the standing to the prayer, while you are not in a state of purity, then wash your faces and your hands with the elbows (the elbow: is the joint which is between the forearm and the upper arm) and wipe your heads, and wash your feet with the ankles (and they are: the two prominent bones at the meeting of the leg with the foot). And if the major ritual impurity struck you then purify yourselves by bathing from it before the prayer. Then if you were sick, or on a journey in the state of health, or one of you performed his need, or had intercourse with his wife, then you did not find water then strike with your hands the surface of the earth, and wipe your faces and your hands from it. Allah does not intend in the matter of purity to narrow upon you, but rather He made lawful the Tayammum as an expansion for you, and a mercy to you, as He made it a substitute for water in purity, so the concession of Tayammum was from the completion of the blessings which necessitate the gratitude of the Bestower; by His obedience in what He commanded and in what He forbade.