Al-Furqan · Makki · ayah 7 of 77

Al-Furqan 25:7

وَقَالُوا۟ مَالِ هَـٰذَا ٱلرَّسُولِ يَأْكُلُ ٱلطَّعَامَ وَيَمْشِى فِى ٱلْأَسْوَاقِ ۙ لَوْلَآ أُنزِلَ إِلَيْهِ مَلَكٌ فَيَكُونَ مَعَهُۥ نَذِيرًا

“And they say, "What is this messenger that eats food and walks in the markets? Why was there not sent down to him an angel so he would be with him a warner?”

Saheeh International

Essence

They mocked a messenger who ate and shopped as they did, yet the ordinariness they scorned is exactly what made him someone to follow.

A reflection

The assumption that holiness cannot be hungry

Listen to the tone first. 'What is the matter with this messenger?' One classical commentary hears contempt in it. They call him 'messenger' as a jibe, the way someone says 'this genius' about a person they think a fool. The little word hādhā, this, belittles him further.

Then comes the charge. He eats food. He walks in the markets. The commentators unpack it. He eats as we eat and needs food as we need it. He goes to and fro in the markets to earn, as we do. If God had really sent him, they reasoned, he would need none of that.

Underneath sits an assumption still alive today. Holiness must look unlike us. A man of God should not get hungry, queue or count his change.

A teenager has played one reciter's voice every night for two years. He has pictured him somehow apart from ordinary life. Then he sees him at a station kiosk, counting coins for a sandwich and checking his phone for the train. Something in the boy deflates. He had not known he expected anything else.

The Quran does not apologise for the sandwich. Later in this surah it answers directly: every messenger sent before you ate food and walked in the markets (25:20). Elsewhere he is told to say: I am only a human being like you, to whom revelation comes (18:110).

What sets a messenger apart is not his body. It is what he is given and how he carries it. The boy at the station has not lost a hero. He has found out which kind is worth having: one who eats, and still never lies.

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.