Al-Mu'minun · Makki · ayah 51 of 118

Al-Mu'minun 23:51

يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلرُّسُلُ كُلُوا۟ مِنَ ٱلطَّيِّبَـٰتِ وَٱعْمَلُوا۟ صَـٰلِحًا ۖ إِنِّى بِمَا تَعْمَلُونَ عَلِيمٌ

“[Allāh said], "O messengers, eat from the good foods and work righteousness. Indeed I, of what you do, am Knowing.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Even the messengers were told to eat what is good and do what repairs, under the gaze of the One who knows every deed.

A reflection

Said to the best of people, and so to you

A master cabinetmaker, forty years at the bench, submits one last piece to the guild. The assessor turns the drawer over and studies the joints with a lens. Nobody is offended. The standard does not bend for seniority.

Look at who is addressed here. Yā ayyuhā al-rusul: O messengers. Not the careless, not the doubters, but the best people who ever walked the earth. And the ayah ends: innī bimā taʿmalūna ʿalīm, I know well what you do.

Two commentators draw the obvious conclusion. One notes that this is a warning to the messengers despite their high rank, so it is all the more a warning to everyone else. Another says Allah addressed prophets and believers alike with the duty of lawful food, then placed them all under the same warning. If this is how it is with them, he asks, what should other people think of themselves?

That question is aimed at the ego. Pride tells you there are rules for ordinary people and exemptions for people like you. You have served long enough, studied enough, given enough. Surely the lens is for beginners.

This ayah removes that exemption at the very top. The messengers were not spared the reminder that they are seen. Nor were they insulted by it. They lived as people who knew they were watched by the One whose knowledge has no edge, and that knowing made them better, not smaller.

Notice too that the knowing reaches everything, the outward deed and the inward one. One commentator glosses it: nothing of your deeds is hidden from Me. I will reward you for all of them, so take up good deeds and strive.

So the line works both ways. It humbles the one who thinks he has outgrown being watched. And it comforts the one whose good work nobody notices. The same knowledge that checks the master's joints also sees the quiet drawer nobody else will ever open.

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.