Az-Zumar · Makki · ayah 18 of 75

Az-Zumar 39:18

ٱلَّذِينَ يَسْتَمِعُونَ ٱلْقَوْلَ فَيَتَّبِعُونَ أَحْسَنَهُۥٓ ۚ أُو۟لَـٰٓئِكَ ٱلَّذِينَ هَدَىٰهُمُ ٱللَّهُ ۖ وَأُو۟لَـٰٓئِكَ هُمْ أُو۟لُوا۟ ٱلْأَلْبَـٰبِ

“Who listen to speech and follow the best of it. Those are the ones Allāh has guided, and those are people of understanding.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Good news is for those who truly listen and follow the best of what they hear: Allah guides them, and theirs are the real minds.

A reflection

The bucket's ear

Yastamiʿūna is not simply 'they hear'. It is a deliberate form: they listen, they lend the ear on purpose. The root s-m-ʿ is taking in a thing with the ear. And the lexicons record a lovely picture from the desert well.

The great leather bucket had a loop at its middle called its misamʿ, its ear. A rope passed through that loop kept the bucket level as it was hauled up, so the water did not spill. A poet boasted: we straighten whoever leans towards us, as the bucket is straightened by its ear. Hearing, in that picture, is what keeps a thing upright.

That is exactly the role the ayah gives listening. These are people kept level by what they listen to. They do not let every voice tip them. They hold themselves steady by a rope of attention through the right loop.

The lexicons add that samʿ reaches past the ear into understanding, answering and obeying. 'We hear and we obey' uses the same word. A listener in this sense is not passive. He takes in, weighs and responds.

Picture a student in a lecture hall of two hundred. Most have laptops open, half on social media. She has a notebook and a single pen. She writes down only what changes her understanding. At the end she has a page and a half. Her neighbour has twenty pages of typed transcript, and has heard almost nothing.

The ayah praises the first kind of listening. Not the most hours of audio, but the attention that keeps the bucket level all the way up from the dark.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.