Ali 'Imran · Madani · ayah 34 of 200

Ali 'Imran 3:34

ذُرِّيَّةًۢ بَعْضُهَا مِنۢ بَعْضٍ ۗ وَٱللَّهُ سَمِيعٌ عَلِيمٌ

“Descendants, some of them from others. And Allāh is Hearing and Knowing.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The chosen were one line, each from the other in faith and in birth, and Allah heard and knew every word and secret along it.

A reflection

Heard the first time

A man asks the speaker in his kitchen to play a song. It plays the wrong one. He asks again, slower and louder. It sets a timer. The third time he gives up and finds it himself.

The ayah closes the list of the chosen with two of Allah's names: Samīʿ, All-Hearing, and ʿAlīm, All-Knowing. A major early commentator links them directly to the next scene. Allah heard the words of ʿImrān's wife, he says, and knew what she held in her heart when she vowed her unborn child to Him.

The lexicons picture the root of hearing with a working part of a well. The great leather bucket had a loop in its middle called its ear. A rope through that ear kept the bucket level as it rose from the water. Hearing, in that picture, is what keeps a thing upright. Allah's hearing holds every whispered prayer steady.

Here the ego is quietly corrected. Much of what we do is pitched for an audience. We raise our voices, post, repeat, and still feel unheard. A pregnant woman's private vow, said to no crowd, was heard in full the first time. It opened the story the surah is about to tell.

His knowledge goes further than hearing. ʿAlīm reaches what was never said aloud: the intention behind the vow, the fear behind the hope. Another commentator adds that this is why He chooses whom He chooses. He knows who is fit for it.

Does He need to tell us that He hears? He is free of all need (35:15). We are the ones who need to know it. Otherwise we spend our lives shouting at the wrong listeners.

The kitchen speaker will improve, and it will still mishear. The One the ayah names has never misheard a single word, in any language, at any volume.

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.