The Table (Al-Ma’idah) المائدة 111–115
111
وَإِذْ أَوْحَيْتُ إِلَى الْحَوَارِيِّينَ أَنْ آمِنُواْ بِي وَبِرَسُولِي قَالُوَاْ آمَنَّا وَاشْهَدْ بِأَنَّنَا مُسْلِمُونَ
[Remember the time], when I inspired the disciples to believe in Me and in My messenger, they replied, “We believe, bear witness that we have submitted.”’
112
إِذْ قَالَ الْحَوَارِيُّونَ يَا عِيسَى ابْنَ مَرْيَمَ هَلْ يَسْتَطِيعُ رَبُّكَ أَن يُنَزِّلَ عَلَيْنَا مَآئِدَةً مِّنَ السَّمَاء قَالَ اتَّقُواْ اللّهَ إِن كُنتُم مُّؤْمِنِينَ
When the disciples said, ‘O Jesus, son of Mary! Can your Lord send down to us from heaven a table spread with food?’ He replied, ‘Have fear of God, if you are true believers.’
113
قَالُواْ نُرِيدُ أَن نَّأْكُلَ مِنْهَا وَتَطْمَئِنَّ قُلُوبُنَا وَنَعْلَمَ أَن قَدْ صَدَقْتَنَا وَنَكُونَ عَلَيْهَا مِنَ الشَّاهِدِينَ
They said, ‘We want to eat from it, so that we may satisfy our hearts and know that you have told us the truth, and that we should be witnesses of it.’
114
قَالَ عِيسَى ابْنُ مَرْيَمَ اللَّهُمَّ رَبَّنَا أَنزِلْ عَلَيْنَا مَآئِدَةً مِّنَ السَّمَاء تَكُونُ لَنَا عِيداً لِّأَوَّلِنَا وَآخِرِنَا وَآيَةً مِّنكَ وَارْزُقْنَا وَأَنتَ خَيْرُ الرَّازِقِينَ
Jesus, son of Mary, said, ‘O God, our Lord! Send down for us a table spread with food from heaven, so that it may be a feast for us, for the first of us and for the last of us: a sign from You. Give us our sustenance, for You are the best of sustainers.’
115
قَالَ اللّهُ إِنِّي مُنَزِّلُهَا عَلَيْكُمْ فَمَن يَكْفُرْ بَعْدُ مِنكُمْ فَإِنِّي أُعَذِّبُهُ عَذَابًا لاَّ أُعَذِّبُهُ أَحَدًا مِّنَ الْعَالَمِينَ
God replied, ‘I will certainly send it down to you, but whosoever of you deny the truth thereafter will be punished with a punishment such as I have never meted out to anyone else in the world.’
No class discussions published for this verse group yet.
(a) It is the dayee who performs the duty of calling upon people to Truth. But a positive response to this call cannot be given unless it is God-inspired. Even after being convinced of the veracity of the call, a man still does not necessarily proceed to accept it, as many impediments still remain—the appearance of the missionary as a common man; the fear that on acceptance of the call the structure of the life already built up will crumble, the question that if this is the Truth, whether certain great men were strangers to the Truth, etc. This is a critical juncture where a man is unable to take a decision, even having reached the stage of decision-making. This is the point at which God helps him. He holds the hands of a person in whom He sees some goodness and leads him across the borders of doubt and ushers him into the area of certainty. (b) Man is constantly being provided with the provisions for his life by God. In fact, the whole earth has become a table laid with provisions for man. But the demand made by the believers in Jesus for food to be sent down from the sky caused a severe warning to be given to them. The reason for this is that the provisions we receive under normal conditions are routed through a veil of cause and effect, while the demand of the believers involved the removal of that veil. This is again the way of God, because if this veil is removed, how can the conditions for human trial be perpetuated? (a) The fact is that crops flourishing in the fields, or the emergence of a tree, stout and green, from beneath the earth are all as miraculous events as the descent to us of a platter containing food from the midst of the clouds. But the miraculous nature of these events is not apparent to us because they appear from behind a veil. It is the test of man that he should be able to see the reality by tearing down that veil. He should be able to look upon the basic elements of foodstuffs emerging from the earth as if they were descending from heaven. If a person insists that he will accept the Divine Truth only on ‘seeing’ it, then he is saying, as it were, that he will receive God’s grace without undergoing His trial, and that is not possible according to the way of God.