Ali 'Imran · Madani · ayah 181 of 200

Ali 'Imran 3:181

لَّقَدْ سَمِعَ ٱللَّهُ قَوْلَ ٱلَّذِينَ قَالُوٓا۟ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ فَقِيرٌ وَنَحْنُ أَغْنِيَآءُ ۘ سَنَكْتُبُ مَا قَالُوا۟ وَقَتْلَهُمُ ٱلْأَنۢبِيَآءَ بِغَيْرِ حَقٍّ وَنَقُولُ ذُوقُوا۟ عَذَابَ ٱلْحَرِيقِ

“Allāh has certainly heard the statement of those [Jews] who said, "Indeed, Allāh is poor, while we are rich." We will record what they said and their killing of the prophets without right and will say, "Taste the punishment of the Burning Fire.”

Saheeh International

Essence

A sentence said to win an argument was heard, written down and placed in the same column as the killing of prophets.

A reflection

Why the Owner asks for a loan

A joiner is cutting a shelf and asks his five-year-old to hold the end of the plank. She holds it with both arms and great seriousness. He does not need her. The plank is clamped. For a week afterwards she tells everybody that she built the shelf, and in a way that nobody should correct, she did.

The commentaries report that this ayah answers a taunt. An earlier ayah had asked: who will lend Allah a goodly loan, so that He multiplies it for him many times over (2:245). Some of the learned men of Madinah seized on the word. If He is asking us for a loan, He must be short, and we must be the ones with money.

Take the word they chose. Faqīr comes from a root meaning a gap. The faqār are the vertebrae of the back, named for the spaces between them. The lexicons record that the word for the poor man was derived from there. He is like someone whose spine has been broken by need. A calamity that breaks the back is a fāqira. So the sentence they produced was not a mild one. They applied a broken back to the Most High.

And they chose their own word as carelessly. Aghniyāʾ comes from a root that means sufficiency, having enough. People ghanū in a place when they settled there content, needing nowhere else. One lexicon notes that money is only one way of having enough, and not the deepest. They used the vocabulary of self-sufficiency about themselves while standing inside borrowed lungs.

This is where pride is caught out, and it is worth saying that our version is quieter. Nobody reading this will say that sentence. But the ego says the second half of it constantly. We are rich. I am fine. I do not need anyone. The arrogance is not usually in the theology. It is in the balance of an ordinary Tuesday.

So why the word loan. Because a loan gives the lender a claim. The Owner of everything, who needs nothing, chose a word that dignifies the giver and costs Himself nothing. He did not need the plank held. He let a child hold it, and then let her tell everyone she built the shelf.

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.