Ar-Ra'd · Madani · ayah 38 of 43

Ar-Ra'd 13:38

وَلَقَدْ أَرْسَلْنَا رُسُلًا مِّن قَبْلِكَ وَجَعَلْنَا لَهُمْ أَزْوَٰجًا وَذُرِّيَّةً ۚ وَمَا كَانَ لِرَسُولٍ أَن يَأْتِىَ بِـَٔايَةٍ إِلَّا بِإِذْنِ ٱللَّهِ ۗ لِكُلِّ أَجَلٍ كِتَابٌ

“And We have already sent messengers before you and assigned to them wives and descendants. And it was not for a messenger to come with a sign except by permission of Allāh. For every term is a decree.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Every messenger before Muhammad had a wife and children like other people, brought signs only by Allah's permission; every matter has its appointed time.

A reflection

A prophet, not a performer

Two objections sit side by side behind this ayah, both recorded in the earliest commentary on it. Some of Muhammad's contemporaries found it strange, even disqualifying. A man claiming to speak for Allah still married, still raised children, still lived an ordinary domestic life. They expected something more detached and otherworldly. Others, in the same breath, demanded that he prove his claim by producing whichever miracle they named on the spot. It was as if a true messenger should be able to summon signs the way a magician summons tricks. The ayah answers both with the same fact. Every messenger sent before him had wives and children too, and not one of them produced a sign except when Allah permitted it. The two objections, oddly, cancel each other out. A being detached enough from ordinary human life to seem suitably other would need no permission for anything. It would already be more than human. A being fully human enough to marry, grieve and raise children is, by the same logic, different again. Such a being cannot conjure a miracle to order. That power was never the messenger's own to begin with. The demand for a sign on command and the complaint about too ordinary a life were never actually compatible. Satisfying one would have undermined the premise behind the other. A modern version of the same confusion shows up around anyone given real authority or expertise. A surgeon is expected to be infallible, yet also fully present at home. A scholar is expected to have time for everyone's question, yet also produce original insight nobody else has reached. The ayah's quiet correction applies just as well here. Competence in one domain was never a licence to demand superhuman completeness in every other.

The full entry has 5 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.