Sad · Makki · ayah 13 of 88

Sad 38:13

وَثَمُودُ وَقَوْمُ لُوطٍ وَأَصْحَـٰبُ لْـَٔيْكَةِ ۚ أُو۟لَـٰٓئِكَ ٱلْأَحْزَابُ

“And [the tribe of] Thamūd and the people of Lot and the companions of the thicket [i.e., people of Madyan]. Those are the companies.[1323]”

Saheeh International

Essence

The bands are named at last, and one short sentence tells Makkah's chiefs exactly whose company their stance has put them in.

A reflection

Read who else is in the band

A man joins the bar of his new golf club. The regulars are friendly. They make room for him, buy him a drink, include him in the jokes. On the third evening a young waitress clears their table, and the jokes turn to her. He laughs with them. On the drive home he hears his own laugh again, and does not like whose it was.

Two ayat back, Makkah's chiefs were called a troop 'among the aḥzāb', the bands. They may have heard it as a vague insult. Now the bands are named: Nūḥ's people, ʿĀd, Pharaoh, Thamūd, Lūṭ's people, the people of the Thicket. Then comes a short, pointed sentence: ulāʾika al-aḥzāb, those are the bands.

One commentator explains the point of the pointing. It tells the listener that the bands to which the routed troop belongs are exactly these, and that these are the ones who denied. Another notes that the sentence runs both ways, head to head. The bands are those, and those are the bands. There is no other membership list.

So the ayah does to Makkah's chiefs what the drive home did to the man. It reads them the names of the company they have joined. A drowned generation. A tribe flattened by wind. A tyrant at the bottom of the sea. A people who carved homes from rock (89:9). A town turned upside down (11:82). A people of lush groves. You stood with them, the ayah says, when you walked out of that room.

Is that fair, to judge a person by the company his stance puts him in? The ayah does not judge by accident of birth. It names a choice: these peoples denied, and so did you. The company is the consequence of the stance, not a slur.

Few of us choose our company by examining it. We drift into it: the friendly table, the group with the jokes, the side that feels like home. The ayah asks for one act of attention. Read the list of who else is in this band. The Prophet ﷺ said that a person will be with those he loves (Sahih al-Bukhari; Sahih Muslim). Choose them knowing they will be your company.

The full entry has 4 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.