Al-Anbya · Makki · ayah 41 of 112

Al-Anbya 21:41

وَلَقَدِ ٱسْتُهْزِئَ بِرُسُلٍ مِّن قَبْلِكَ فَحَاقَ بِٱلَّذِينَ سَخِرُوا۟ مِنْهُم مَّا كَانُوا۟ بِهِۦ يَسْتَهْزِءُونَ

“And already were messengers ridiculed before you, but those who mocked them were enveloped by what they used to ridicule.”

Saheeh International

Essence

After the warnings comes consolation: messengers before you were mocked too, and the mockery closed round the mockers like their own trap.

A reflection

You are not the first

These words appear almost exactly in Al-Anʿam (6:10). Here their place in the surah gives them a particular tone. The ayat before have answered the mockers and warned them. Now the voice turns to the Prophet ﷺ himself. Every commentator calls it the same thing: consolation. If they mock you, others were mocked before you; be patient as they were.

One classical commentator notices the details. The ayah opens with an oath-like emphasis. And "messengers" is left indefinite in a way that suggests both their greatness and their number. The surah will soon name many of them, he says, so that he can find his example in them.

Picture a young imam who is heckled during his first Friday sermon at a small mosque. Afterwards he sits alone in the office, mortified. An elderly committee member brings him tea and an old minute book. He opens it at a page from thirty years earlier, recording that the previous imam was heckled at his first sermon too. "And he stayed twenty-five years," the old man says.

That is what the ayah gives: not an argument, but company.

The full entry has 2 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.