Quran Garden

Session 481

Chapter 3

Verse 153

You ?ed to level ground without looking back while the Messenger was calling out to you from the rear, so God rewarded you with sorrow for sorrow so that you may not grieve for what you missed or for what happened to you.  God is well aware of everything you do.  (Chapter 3: Verse 153)

This verse gives the believers a snapshot of the battle so whenever each Companion hears it, he would recall the terrible events of Uhud; Events that should have never been allowed to happen.  When you flee a scene, you look for the easiest way out with the least obstacles, and that is what the companions did: they ran to the level ground to minimize any chance of stumbling here or there as they sped away.  None of them looked back because all their focus was on getting out of the battlegrounds. 

But the phrase "without looking back" is a reminder that they left Prophet Muhammad, the greatest leader, with only a few companions to face the charge of Quraysh.   God continues, "While the Messenger was calling out to you from the rear."  The Prophet, peace be upon him, was calling them to return to the battlefield and be by his side.  How do you think their escape made our beloved Muhammad feel?  Sad?  Disappointed?  Let down?  We can summarize all these feelings with one word: he, peace be upon him, felt deep sorrow. 

God tells the believers, "So God rewarded you with sorrow for sorrow." You disobeyed the Prophet's orders, abandoned the battlefield, and let your Messenger down.  Thus, you deserve to be hit with deep sorrow as a punishment for the sorrow you inflicted on God's Messenger. 

Logically the verse should have said, "So God punished you with sorrow for sorrow." But, when dealing with the believers, Allah, the Glorified and Exalted, wraps His punishment with divine mercy; thus, this was a reward for the believers.  How, you may ask?  We answer that by afflicting the believers with a sorrow equal to that they afflicted Prophet Muhammad with, Allah delivered justice and absolved them of their grave mistake.

The verse continues, "So that you may not grieve for what you missed or for what happened to you." The feelings of sorrow, humiliation, and loss preoccupied the believers and saved them from thinking about worldly materialism.  They were no longer worried about victory or missing out on the war loot; as if the sorrow they were afflicted with removed the love of the spoils of war –which caused all their troubles- out of their hearts.   Imagine a man who is so preoccupied with buying a pair of shoes on his phone that he does not pay attention to his child.  The child falls and is now bleeding from the forehead.  If, at that moment, you ask the father about that nice pair of shoes, he would yell at you, "What pair of shoes!  Don't you see my son bleeding?  I will never look at shoes again in my life!" Allah is the expert on what was in the hearts of the believers, so He threw enough sorrow at them to deliver them from the lure of the spoils.  Indeed, "God is well aware of everything you do."