As-Saffat · Makki · ayah 132 of 182

As-Saffat 37:132

إِنَّهُۥ مِنْ عِبَادِنَا ٱلْمُؤْمِنِينَ

“Indeed, he was of Our believing servants.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Rejected by his own people, Ilyas is given another people to belong to: Allah's believing servants.

A reflection

Disowned by one people, counted in another

Ilyas's story began with his people: when he said to his people (37:124). By its end, they have denied him. The last line of the story gives him a different belonging: he was of Our believing servants. The word min, of or among, places him in a company.

That company includes those named in the same refrain before him: Nuh, Ibrahim, Musa and Harun. And on one reading of the greeting two ayat earlier, it includes the sincere few of his own town who stood with him (37:128).

Picture a young woman who becomes Muslim in her twenties. Her family stops speaking to her. Her first Ramadan, she expects to break her fast alone in her flat. Instead, a woman she barely knows from the mosque invites her home and seats her beside the grandmother. By the end of the meal she is being told off, affectionately, for not eating enough. She has been counted.

This ayah does that for Ilyas. The people of his birth rejected him. Allah wrote him into another people, and named it as His own: Our servants.

The full entry has 2 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.