Taha · Makki · ayah 132 of 135

Taha 20:132

وَأْمُرْ أَهْلَكَ بِٱلصَّلَوٰةِ وَٱصْطَبِرْ عَلَيْهَا ۖ لَا نَسْـَٔلُكَ رِزْقًا ۖ نَّحْنُ نَرْزُقُكَ ۗ وَٱلْعَـٰقِبَةُ لِلتَّقْوَىٰ

“And enjoin prayer upon your family [and people] and be steadfast therein. We ask you not for provision; We provide for you, and the [best] outcome is for [those of] righteousness.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Call your household to prayer and hold to it yourself; He asks no provision of you, He provides, and the end belongs to the mindful.

A reflection

Prayer is not a tax on your time

Lā nasʾaluka rizqan, naḥnu narzuquk: We do not ask you for provision; We provide for you. It comes straight after the command to pray, and the order matters.

Many of us experience prayer as time taken away from earning. Five interruptions in a day that has too few hours. The ayah turns that upside down. Allah is not asking you to provide anything for Him. He needs no prayer, no time, no provision. One commentary sets beside it the ayah: I did not create jinn and humans except to worship Me. I want no provision from them (51:56–57). Another says: We do not ask you to feed yourself and them and be distracted from prayer by it; We take charge of your provision.

One classical commentator adds a saying: whoever busies himself with the work of Allah, Allah takes care of his work. Then: free your mind for the matter of the Hereafter.

Picture a freelance designer who skips the afternoon prayer most days. A client might email; a deadline might move; if she steps away for ten minutes she might lose the job. She is exhausted by this vigilance. One Ramadan she decides to pray every prayer on time for a month, whatever the inbox says. At the end of the month she notices that she has lost nothing. She has actually gained something: five daily moments when she is not on guard.

That is what the ayah offers. Prayer is not a payment you make to God out of a tight budget. It is a break in the anxious arithmetic, given by the One who has already done the sums.

So when the urge comes to skip a prayer for the sake of work, hear the ayah: We are not asking you for provision. Put the phone face-down. Pray. The provision is His job, and He has never been late.

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.