Al-Mu'minun · Makki · ayah 61 of 118

Al-Mu'minun 23:61

أُو۟لَـٰٓئِكَ يُسَـٰرِعُونَ فِى ٱلْخَيْرَٰتِ وَهُمْ لَهَا سَـٰبِقُونَ

“It is those who hasten to good deeds, and they outstrip [others] therein.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Those with these four qualities are the real racers: they run within good deeds, and they are the ones who reach them first.

A reflection

From "We hasten for them" to "they hasten"

In a carpenter's workshop, one apprentice sweeps up without being asked and stays late to sharpen chisels. After a year, the master starts handing him the best oak. Nobody calls it favouritism. Everyone knows how the timber reached him.

Five ayat earlier the deniers imagined: nusāriʿu lahum fī al-khayrāt, We hasten good things to them. Here the phrase returns: yusāriʿūna fī al-khayrāt, they hasten in good things. One commentator points out the precise shift in grammar.

The deniers' sentence made Allah the subject, hastening things to them. The believers' sentence makes them the subject. The racing is attributed to them. The commentator says this hints that they deserve the good things through the beauty of their deeds.

Two commentators go further. One reading of khayrāt here, they say, is the good of this world too: benefit and honour hastened to them. Allah gave them the reward of this world and the best reward of the next (3:148). He gave Ibrahim his reward in this world, and in the next he is among the righteous (29:27). One of them calls this reading the best fit with the earlier ayah. It affirms for the believers exactly what was denied to the deniers.

So the believers receive what the deniers only imagined. Good things really are hastened to them, in this world and the next. The difference is that they earned the timber by sweeping the floor. The deniers assumed the best oak was theirs because they were standing in the workshop.

That is a quiet encouragement. A life of fear, faith, sincerity and giving is not a life of permanent loss. It is not only rewarded later. Often the good arrives here too, in peace, in barakah, in a reputation for reliability. But it arrives because you ran towards good, not because good ran towards you.

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.