Al-Anbya · Makki · ayah 55 of 112

Al-Anbya 21:55

قَالُوٓا۟ أَجِئْتَنَا بِٱلْحَقِّ أَمْ أَنتَ مِنَ ٱللَّـٰعِبِينَ

“They said, "Have you come to us with truth, or are you of those who jest?"”

Saheeh International

Essence

Unable to believe anyone could challenge them in earnest, they asked if he was only playing: the oldest way to dismiss an uncomfortable truth.

A reflection

"Are you still a child playing?"

Am anta mina al-lāʿibīn: or are you one of those who play? The first hearers knew where this word came from. One lexicon traces laʿiba to luʿāb, the spittle that runs from a small child's mouth. From there it came to mean any action with no sound aim behind it. Another lexicon says the whole root turns on going along without going straight. The waves were said to "play" with a ship for a month, never carrying it where it meant to go.

One classical rhetorician reads their question in exactly that light. Have you newly taken up dealing in truth, they ask, or are you still in your boyhood ways? To them, Ibrahim was a young man. His challenge must be a youthful game.

Picture a sixteen-year-old on his first month as an apprentice in a large bakery. At four in the morning he tells the head baker that the proving room feels cold; he thinks the heater has tripped. The head baker, thirty years in the trade, waves him off. Stop playing about and shape the rolls. By six, four hundred rolls sit flat and dense on the trays. The heater had tripped at midnight.

The boy was not playing. He was the only one who had checked.

Dismissing a challenge as childish is one of the oldest defences there is. It spares the listener from weighing the content. Ibrahim's people did not ask whether their gods could speak. They asked whether he was still a child. Readers who are young will recognise this. Readers who are older should recognise themselves in the head baker, and check the heater anyway.

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.