Al-Isra · Makki · ayah 31 of 111

Al-Isra 17:31

وَلَا تَقْتُلُوٓا۟ أَوْلَـٰدَكُمْ خَشْيَةَ إِمْلَـٰقٍ ۖ نَّحْنُ نَرْزُقُهُمْ وَإِيَّاكُمْ ۚ إِنَّ قَتْلَهُمْ كَانَ خِطْـًٔا كَبِيرًا

“And do not kill your children for fear of poverty. We provide for them and for you. Indeed, their killing is ever a great sin.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Never let the fear of a future empty hand destroy a child: their provision is named before yours, and both come from Him.

A reflection

Their names come first on the list

A woman is pregnant with her fourth child. At a family dinner, an aunt asks the question everyone has been thinking. How will you afford it? Her husband laughs it off at the table. That night he lies awake, adding up school shoes, a bigger car, a bedroom they do not have.

His worry is love. But somewhere under it sits a quiet assumption: that he is the one who feeds this family. That every new mouth is a weight laid on his two hands alone.

The ayah answers with one word of majesty: naḥnu. We. We provide for them, and for you. A man who thinks he is the source of his children's bread has quietly put himself in a place that is not his. The ayah moves him back, gently, onto the list of those who are fed.

Now notice the order. In Al-Anʿām the same command comes with 'We provide for you and for them' (6:151). Here it is reversed: for them, and for you. One classical commentary explains the difference. There, the parents were already poor, so they are reassured first. Here, they only fear a poverty that has not come. So the children are named first, as provided for in their own right. Their share does not come out of yours. Yours is added beside it.

A narration-based commentary draws a wider lesson from the ayah. It shows, it says, that Allah is more merciful to His servants than a parent to a child. Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim record the scene behind that sentence. A captive woman searching for her baby found him, pressed him to her and fed him. The Prophet ﷺ asked: would she throw her child into the fire? No, they said. He said: Allah is more merciful to His servants than she is to her child.

Allah does not say 'We provide' to be praised for it. He says it to lift a weight off a man's chest at two in the morning. The ego wants to be the provider. Faith is content to be a servant who carries the shopping home.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.