Al-Ma'idah · Madani · ayah 112 of 120

Al-Ma'idah 5:112

إِذْ قَالَ ٱلْحَوَارِيُّونَ يَـٰعِيسَى ٱبْنَ مَرْيَمَ هَلْ يَسْتَطِيعُ رَبُّكَ أَن يُنَزِّلَ عَلَيْنَا مَآئِدَةً مِّنَ ٱلسَّمَآءِ ۖ قَالَ ٱتَّقُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ إِن كُنتُم مُّؤْمِنِينَ

“[And remember] when the disciples said, "O Jesus, Son of Mary, can your Lord[289] send down to us a table [spread with food] from the heaven?" [Jesus] said, "Fear Allāh, if you should be believers."”

Saheeh International

Essence

The closest followers of a prophet ask whether his Lord 'can' send a table, and receive first not food but a warning.

A reflection

Can your Lord, or will He?

A five-year-old tugs her grandfather's sleeve at a family wedding. Grandad, can you still lift me? She is not testing his arms. She wants to be up where the lights are.

Most readers meet this ayah with one picture: the disciples doubted. They asked whether Allah was able, as if His power were in question. On that picture, the ayah is about weak faith exposed.

The commentaries are less sure, and their care is the first thing worth learning. Some read the question as an idiom, like the child's. Can your Lord means will your Lord, as one friend asks another, can you come with me? The ability is not in doubt; the willingness is being asked. Others take the verb in an older sense, to grant or comply. It comes from the same root as obedience.

A second reading of the words, preserved from several Companions, changes the grammar: can you ask your Lord? The Prophet's own wife was among those who read it this way. The disciples, she said, knew Allah too well to doubt Him.

And some commentators say plainly that the question carried real wavering. They point to what came next. If the question were innocent, why would Isa answer it with fear Allah, if you are believers?

So the honest picture holds both. The words can be heard kindly. And yet the reply shows that something in them needed correcting. The ayah does not settle which; it settles what to do. Whatever was in the question, the answer was taqwā.

That is the narrow first image this ayah dislodges. It is not a story about people who doubted and were exposed. It is about people close enough to a prophet to ask him anything, and how even that closeness needed guarding.

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.