An-Naml · Makki · ayah 22 of 93

An-Naml 27:22

فَمَكَثَ غَيْرَ بَعِيدٍ فَقَالَ أَحَطتُ بِمَا لَمْ تُحِطْ بِهِۦ وَجِئْتُكَ مِن سَبَإٍۭ بِنَبَإٍ يَقِينٍ

“But he [i.e., the hoopoe] stayed not long and said, "I have encompassed [in knowledge] that which you have not encompassed, and I have come to you from Sheba with certain news.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The smallest of the king's servants returns quickly and tells a prophet, I know what you do not, from Saba, and it is certain.

A reflection

A small bird, sent to a king who had prayed for gratitude

A few ayat earlier, Sulayman smiled at an ant and prayed: My Lord, inspire me to be grateful for Your favour (27:19). He ruled jinn, men and birds. He understood the speech of creatures. If anyone could have felt he knew everything worth knowing, it was this man.

Then the smallest member of his court lands before him and says: I have encompassed what you have not encompassed.

A rhetorical commentary sees Allah's hand in that sentence. Allah inspired the hoopoe to meet Sulayman with these words, it says, as a test in his knowledge. In the least and weakest of His creatures was someone who knew what the prophet did not. So his self would feel small to him, and his learning modest. It was a kindness, to guard him from self-admiration, which it calls the trial of the learned.

Another commentator objected. What the bird knew was only what it had seen, it said, and seeing a place is no great virtue. A later commentator answered that missing a whole kingdom, given everything Sulayman had, still meant something. And the lesson fits his own prayer: it keeps a grateful man grateful, and humble.

Picture a master carpenter, forty years at the bench. His apprentice, nineteen, holds out a phone. It is a video of a joint cut a quicker way, from some workshop abroad. The old man could wave it off. He watches it twice instead. Then he says: "Show me."

That is the posture this ayah protects. Pride does not usually announce itself. It sounds like "I already know", "I have done this for years", "who is he to tell me". The cure is not to pretend you know nothing. It is to remember that Allah has scattered knowledge among His creatures. He may send the piece you are missing in the smallest hands in the room.

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.