The 365 · Verses · Day 272 · Justice
'Why feed someone God could have fed himself?' - stinginess dressed as theology.
وَإِذَا قِيلَ لَهُمْ أَنفِقُوا۟ مِمَّا رَزَقَكُمُ ٱللَّهُ قَالَ ٱلَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا۟ لِلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوٓا۟ أَنُطْعِمُ مَن لَّوْ يَشَآءُ ٱللَّهُ أَطْعَمَهُۥٓ إِنْ أَنتُمْ إِلَّا فِى ضَلَـٰلٍ مُّبِينٍ
“And when they are told, 'Give to others out of what God has provided for you,' the disbelievers say to the believers, 'Why should we feed those that God could feed if He wanted? You must be deeply misguided.' (Quran 36:47)”
36:47 Read 36:47 with tafsir
Svenska: Och när de som förnekar sanningen uppmanas: "Ge åt andra av det som Gud har skänkt er för er försörjning", säger de till de troende: "Skall vi livnära den som Gud hade kunnat föda, om Han velat? Detta har ni helt missuppfattat!"
The story
This āyah captures an excuse that still circulates. Told to 'spend of what Allah has provided,' the deniers shoot back: 'Shall we feed someone whom, if Allah willed, He would feed?' Ibn Kathīr explains the setting - the command was to spend on the poor and needy - and reads their retort as a claim to be aligning themselves with the divine will: if Allah wanted these people fed, He would have made them rich, so our withholding merely matches His decree. Al-Zamakhsharī sharpens the picture. He reports the words came from the zanādiqa, freethinkers who had heard the believers tie events to Allah's will and who flung that language back in mockery. At root, he says, they denied that wealth and poverty come from Allah at all; they used His name only to score a point. Ibn ʿAbbās recalled such men in Makkah who, when told to give, said: 'No, by Allah - shall Allah impoverish him and then we feed him?' Al-Saʿdī delivers the decisive answer: appealing to the divine will is never a valid argument for a sinner. Whatever Allah wills comes to be and what He does not will does not - but He has granted His servants real power to do what He commands and avoid what He forbids. So when they abandon the command to give, that is their own choice, not a compulsion laid upon them. Here justice and honesty meet: the miser has weaponised predestination to deny the poor their due, and the Qurʾān names it for what it is - not submission to God's plan, but 'plain error.'
In the language
The disbelievers' reply opens with a single interrogative alif - a-nuṭʿimu, 'are we to feed...?' - and al-Zamakhsharī shows that the whole venom of the verse sits in that question. It is not a request for information but istihzāʾ, mockery: they had listened to the believers habitually pin outcomes to Allah's will, and now they parrot the same idiom back, dressing contempt in pious grammar. The rhetorical question already expects the answer 'of course not,' so the form itself performs the refusal before any reason is given. Al-Zamakhsharī adds the theological twist beneath the style: for these speakers the appeal to God's will was hollow, since they did not truly hold that provision comes from God - the sentence borrows the believers' vocabulary while emptying it of belief. It is a small masterclass in how the Qurʾān can quote its opponents so exactly that their own words expose them.
Why this verse
Blaming God's will for the poverty you refuse to relieve is not faith - it is stinginess in a theological costume. Al-Saʿdī is blunt: the divine decree never excuses a sinner, because God gave you the power to obey. Withholding is your own choice.
Bring it into today
Watch for the pious-sounding dodge in your own reasoning. 'If God wanted them out of poverty, they would be' - 'it's their test' - 'who am I to interfere with the decree.' Al-Saʿdī cuts straight through it: predestination is never a licence for a sinner, because Allah gave you genuine ability to act. The same logic covers more than money. When you could speak up for someone treated unfairly, correct a wrong you benefit from, or give time you would rather keep, notice whether you reach for fate as an alibi. The test in that moment is not the other person's - it is yours, and how you respond to their need is precisely what is being measured. Treat every 'God will provide' that lets you off the hook as a red flag. Then do the very thing you were about to excuse yourself from.
A reflection to carry
What makes this āyah sting is that the excuse is almost devout. The deniers do not say 'we don't care about the poor'; they say, in effect, 'we defer to God's will,' weaponising the believers' own language. Al-Zamakhsharī notes the mockery in it; al-Saʿdī supplies the refutation that still holds: nothing happens outside God's will, but God also handed you real agency to obey or refuse, so 'the decree' can never be your alibi for injustice. The poor person's hunger is a claim on you now. Predestination explains the world; it does not discharge your duty within it.
Sources: Ibn Kathīr, al-Zamakhsharī (al-Kashshāf), al-Saʿdī. The Qur'an and its translation are verified; the scholarship is retold faithfully in our own words and credited to its sources, never reproduced verbatim.
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