Sad · Makki · ayah 48 of 88

Sad 38:48

وَٱذْكُرْ إِسْمَـٰعِيلَ وَٱلْيَسَعَ وَذَا ٱلْكِفْلِ ۖ وَكُلٌّ مِّنَ ٱلْأَخْيَارِ

“And remember Ishmael, Elisha and Dhul-Kifl, and all are among the outstanding.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Three prophets share a single line, two of them barely known to us, and one verdict closes it for each: among the best.

A reflection

Most lives get one line

Count the space Surah Sad gives each prophet. Dāwūd has ten ayat, with a courtroom scene and a fall to the ground. Sulaymān has his horses and his throne. Ayyūb has four ayat of illness and healing. Ibrāhīm, Isḥāq and Yaʿqūb share three. Then this ayah gives Ismāʿīl, al-Yasaʿ and Dhul-Kifl one line between them. One classical commentator notes that the stories of the prophets in this surah end here.

It is easy to read that speeding-up as a ranking. The long stories for the great, a quick list for the rest. The ayah closes that reading with its last words. Wa kullun mina al-akhyār: and each of them is among the best. One commentator explains the single word kullun. Its ending stands in for 'all of them', so the verdict is given to each one.

And the verdict is exactly the word given a moment earlier to Ibrāhīm, Isḥāq and Yaʿqūb: al-akhyār (38:47). The word appears only twice in the whole Quran, in these two ayat back to back. The patriarch with three ayat and the prophet we can barely identify end with the same word.

Picture a school leavers' assembly. Three students give speeches: the head girl, the scholarship winner, the boy who survived cancer in Year 10. Then the head teacher reads out the other hundred and eighty names, one line each, without pause. Most parents film only their own child's two seconds. But every one of those names stands up in the same gown and receives the same certificate.

Most of us will be a one-line life. A name on a list, remembered by a few, for a generation or two. That is not failure, and this ayah says why. The length of the story is not the measure. The verdict is. And the verdict on the barely known al-Yasaʿ is the verdict on Ibrāhīm.

So the question is not how much will be written about you. It is what the one line will say.

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.