Ash-Shu'ara · Makki · ayah 223 of 227

Ash-Shu'ara 26:223

يُلْقُونَ ٱلسَّمْعَ وَأَكْثَرُهُمْ كَـٰذِبُونَ

“They pass on what is heard,[1067] and most of them are liars.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Voices claiming hidden knowledge pass on overheard scraps, mostly false, so be careful what you lend your ear to.

A reflection

The audit the soothsayer always fails

A first-year student sits in a lecture on the religions of late antiquity. The lecturer is calm and well read. The Prophet ﷺ, he says, was an ecstatic of a familiar Arabian type. Like the desert oracles of his day, he spoke in charged, rhythmic phrases and claimed a voice from beyond.

She writes it down. Then a question will not leave her alone. If he was one of them, what did their records look like?

This ayah answers that question long before the lecture. The people of Mecca made the same comparison. They called him a soothsayer, a kāhin, and the surah has been answering them for several ayat. Here it names the defining mark of the type: most of them are liars.

One classical commentary turns this into an argument. If his case were like theirs, his reports would be like theirs. Most of what the soothsayers told came out false. Nothing but truth appeared in what he reported. So his case is something else.

Notice what kind of argument that is. It is not a demand to believe. It is a test, and it is handed to the opponent. Measure him by your own category. If he fits, the record will show it.

A second commentary adds a quieter test. The devils descend, the ayah before says, on every sinful liar. The commentary observes that his whole life was clear of every trait in that description. The channel the devils use runs through a certain kind of person. He was never that kind of person, even in his enemies' eyes.

So the student's question was the right one. A category is only as good as its fit. The oracle comparison sounds learned until you check the record. Then it falls apart on the very trait the oracles were known for.

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.