Al-Mu'minun · Makki · ayah 79 of 118

Al-Mu'minun 23:79

وَهُوَ ٱلَّذِى ذَرَأَكُمْ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ وَإِلَيْهِ تُحْشَرُونَ

“And it is He who has multiplied you throughout the earth, and to Him you will be gathered.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The famine that drove proud Makkah to ask for help was a small rehearsal of the gathering no one walks away from.

A reflection

A famine that rehearsed the gathering

Read this ayah where it sits. A few lines earlier, hardship seized Makkah. The commentaries connect it with years of famine. Al-Bukhari reports that the proudest man in the city came to the Prophet ﷺ he opposed, and asked him to pray for rain.

The word at the end of this ayah carried exactly that picture for its first hearers. The lexicons say a hard year ḥasharat a tribe. Drought drove people in off the open desert into the towns, and no one escaped it. Ḥashr is a gathering that drives, not an invitation you may decline.

So Quraysh had just lived through a small ḥashr. Hunger had herded their pride to a door they had sworn never to knock on.

The ayah then widens the frame. Ilayhi tuḥsharūn: to Him you will be gathered. The phrase ilayhi comes first, and one commentary draws out the force of that. It is to Him, and to no one else. Not to the idols, not to the clan, not to public opinion.

This is where the ego meets its limit. We spend our lives choosing whom to stand beside and before whom to appear. The final standing is not chosen. Every proud person who ever refused to ask will be driven, like a herd in a dry year, to stand before the One they refused.

He does not gather us because He needs an audience. He gathers us so that nothing done on the earth is lost.

The full entry has 2 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.