Al-Jumu'ah · Madani · ayah 3 of 11

Al-Jumu'ah 62:3

وَءَاخَرِينَ مِنْهُمْ لَمَّا يَلْحَقُوا۟ بِهِمْ ۚ وَهُوَ ٱلْعَزِيزُ ٱلْحَكِيمُ

“And [to] others of them who have not yet joined them. And He is the Exalted in Might, the Wise.”

Saheeh International

Essence

You are in this ayah: one of the others who had not yet caught up, expected while the surah was still coming down.

A reflection

Who decides who catches up

At a community Eid lunch, a man sits beside a woman who took her shahada in March. His family has prayed in the same town for six generations. He spends the meal explaining things she already knows. He means well. He also assumes, in some quiet way, that the faith is his family's property.

The ayah ends on two names: al-ʿAzīz al-Ḥakīm, the Mighty, the Wise. Placed here, straight after 'others of them who have not yet joined them', they answer a question no one has asked aloud. Who decides who joins, and when? Not the first arrivals. Not the oldest families. Not the language or the land.

One commentary reads the names this way. He is the Mighty in that He has set, in every human being, a trace of lowliness before Him and need of Him. He is the Wise in that He has placed, in every created thing, something that testifies to His oneness. No people holds a monopoly on either. A Persian, a Berber, a Malay or a Scot carries the same trace and the same testimony.

So the ayah gently empties the ego of inheritance. Being born into the faith is a gift, and gifts are not achievements. The six-generation family did not earn its head start. The woman beside him did not arrive late through any failure. Each was brought by the Mighty, at the hour the Wise chose.

Does Allah need to tell us He is Mighty and Wise? Not for His own sake. A history this wide, spreading from one valley to every continent, would look like chance to anyone without these names. He tells us so that we read it correctly, and stop admiring ourselves for being early.

The man at the lunch might try a different question. Instead of checking whether she knows things, he could ask what brought her. The answer will be a story of the Mighty and the Wise, and he will be the one learning.

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.