Al-Mu'minun · Makki · ayah 55 of 118

Al-Mu'minun 23:55

أَيَحْسَبُونَ أَنَّمَا نُمِدُّهُم بِهِۦ مِن مَّالٍ وَبَنِينَ

“Do they think that what We extend to them of wealth and children”

Saheeh International

Essence

Wealth and children are a supply poured in from outside, and those who count them as proof of divine approval have miscounted.

A reflection

The channel you never noticed

A man shows his guests round his orchard. He explains his pruning, his spraying, his early starts. Nobody looks down. At their feet, a stone channel carries water from a spring in the hills. Without it, there would be no orchard.

The ayah chooses its verb with care: numidduhum, We supply them. Two commentators gloss it as what We give them and make a supply for them. The subject is Allah. The wealth and the sons did not originate with their owners. They were fed in.

The lexicons give the root an established image. Madd is drawing a thing out, or joining more on so that it reaches further. A river is stretched when another stream pours in and swells it. Whatever feeds a thing with more of its kind is its mādda, its supply.

So the river does not make itself. Every bank balance, every child at the table, is a tributary poured in from outside. The verb says so before the ayah has said anything else.

That is a direct blow to the ego. Pride narrates a life as self-made. I worked, I saved, I built. The work was real. But the strength to work and the mind that planned did not come from the man in the orchard. Nor did the market that paid, or the child that was born.

This does not make Allah needy of thanks, as though He supplied in order to be praised. He is the Rich, free of need (35:15). The reminder serves the receiver. A man who knows where his water comes from guards the channel. A man who credits only his pruning lets it silt up.

The deniers in Makkah were not wrong to see their wealth. They were wrong about its source and its meaning. The ayah begins by correcting the source. The next ayah corrects the meaning.

Before you describe your success, glance down. Find the channel. Then say whose water it is.

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.