Al-Anbya · Makki · ayah 83 of 112

Al-Anbya 21:83

۞ وَأَيُّوبَ إِذْ نَادَىٰ رَبَّهُۥٓ أَنِّى مَسَّنِىَ ٱلضُّرُّ وَأَنتَ أَرْحَمُ ٱلرَّٰحِمِينَ

“And [mention] Job, when he called to his Lord, "Indeed, adversity has touched me, and You are the most merciful of the merciful."”

Saheeh International

Essence

After years of loss and sickness, Ayyub asked for nothing by name: he told his Lord where it hurt, and who his Lord is.

A reflection

Most merciful of all who have ever shown mercy

Wa anta arḥamu al-rāḥimīn: and You are the most merciful of the merciful. One commentator explains the comparison carefully. Allah is greater in mercy than anyone who has any share of mercy at all. And in truth, he adds, there is no one merciful except Him.

Sahih al-Bukhari records the Prophet ﷺ describing the scale of this. Allah made mercy in a hundred parts. He kept ninety-nine with Himself and sent down one part to the earth. From that one part all creatures show mercy to each other. Even a mare lifts her hoof away from her foal for fear of hurting it.

Picture an emergency foster carer whose phone rings at two in the morning. She opens the door to a social worker holding a baby in a car seat, taken from a dangerous home an hour before. She has done this more than forty times in twenty years. She still cries every time. She warms a bottle, sits in the rocking chair, and holds a stranger's child as if he were her own until the sun comes up.

Everyone who hears of her calls her remarkable, and she is. But the hadith puts her in proportion. Her mercy, every mother's mercy, every nurse's and every stranger's, all of it together, is drawn from one part of a hundred.

That is where the ego meets its true size, even in our goodness. We can grow proud of being kind. The ayah gently reminds us that our kindness is borrowed light. The source of it is the One Ayyub called on.

Does Allah need to be praised as the Most Merciful? No. Ayyub did not say it to flatter. He said it because it was the truest thing he knew, and because it was his whole case. When you are in pain, that is the name to call.

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.