Ali 'Imran · Madani · ayah 199 of 200

Ali 'Imran 3:199

وَإِنَّ مِنْ أَهْلِ ٱلْكِتَـٰبِ لَمَن يُؤْمِنُ بِٱللَّهِ وَمَآ أُنزِلَ إِلَيْكُمْ وَمَآ أُنزِلَ إِلَيْهِمْ خَـٰشِعِينَ لِلَّهِ لَا يَشْتَرُونَ بِـَٔايَـٰتِ ٱللَّهِ ثَمَنًا قَلِيلًا ۗ أُو۟لَـٰٓئِكَ لَهُمْ أَجْرُهُمْ عِندَ رَبِّهِمْ ۗ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ سَرِيعُ ٱلْحِسَابِ

“And indeed, among the People of the Scripture are those who believe in Allāh and what was revealed to you and what was revealed to them, [being] humbly submissive to Allāh. They do not exchange the verses of Allāh for a small price. Those will have their reward with their Lord. Indeed, Allāh is swift in account.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Among the People of the Book are those who believed, stayed low before Allah, and never sold His signs; their wage is with their Lord.

A reflection

No queue, no file, no waiting for the team

The ayah ends on a clause that looks like a formula and is not. Allah is swift in reckoning. One early authority glossed it simply as swift in counting up. One concise commentary goes further. He will take the whole creation to account in the space of half a day of this world's days.

Think about why that matters where it is placed. The sentence before it says: those will have their wage with their Lord. Then this. The wage is not sitting in a process.

Everything we know about accounting is slow and expensive. A family waits fourteen months for an estate to be settled. They cannot close a single thing until it is: not the bank, not the house, not the grieving. Every few weeks somebody says the file is with the relevant team. Nobody is being cruel. It is simply that counting takes people, and people take time.

And our whole sense of our own importance quietly depends on that delay. Delay is where you compose your version of events. It is where the arrogant feel safe, because the gap between the deed and the reckoning is long enough to look like permission. Remove the gap and nothing in the ego has anywhere to stand.

So the clause is not decoration. It is a statement about the kind of One we are dealing with: no backlog, no queue, nothing waiting on resources.

And it answers the uneasy thought that a God who keeps announcing His own capacities sounds like a ruler who needs the credit. Look at who the sentence is for. It is told to a reader worried that doing the right thing quietly, in a place nobody notices, will never be counted. That reader is being told the counting is already done. A boast would have been aimed at Him. This is aimed at you.

The full entry has 7 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.