Al-Furqan · Makki · ayah 77 of 77

Al-Furqan 25:77

قُلْ مَا يَعْبَؤُا۟ بِكُمْ رَبِّى لَوْلَا دُعَآؤُكُمْ ۖ فَقَدْ كَذَّبْتُمْ فَسَوْفَ يَكُونُ لِزَامًۢا

“Say, "What would my Lord care for you if not for your supplication?"[1040] For you [disbelievers] have denied, so it [i.e., your denial] is going to be adherent.[1041]”

Saheeh International

Essence

After the whole portrait, one sentence settles what a human being weighs with Allah: nothing, except their calling on Him.

A reflection

What you weigh, and what you do not

Mā yaʿbaʾu bikum rabbī: what weight would my Lord give you? The commentaries explain the idiom bluntly. To say 'I do not ʿabaʾ him' was to say he had no weight with me. One early grammarian put it more starkly: his existence and his absence are the same to me.

Sit with that for a moment, because the ego cannot. Every human life is built around a quiet sense of mattering. The corner office, the bonus, the number under a photograph, the family name above a shop. Each is a claim to weigh something. This ayah sets all of them on the scale before the Lord of the heavens and the earth, and the needle does not move.

Then it names the one thing that does register: lawlā duʿāʾukum, were it not for your calling on Him.

That is humbling, and it is meant to be. Pride is the belief that one's weight comes from oneself. The ayah removes that belief entirely. But it does not leave a person weightless. It relocates their weight. A human being matters to Allah, it says, through the one act every human being can do: turning to Him and calling on Him.

A sceptic may object that this is arrogance: a God who says people do not matter to Him. One commentary draws the opposite conclusion. The ayah shows that Allah is free of all need of their worship, and that He commanded it only so that they would benefit. Sahih Muslim records the same truth in a hadith qudsi. If the first and last of you were as devout as the most devout heart, it would add nothing to My dominion.

He does not need the calling. The caller does.

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.