Al-Ankaboot (The Spider)

26. “Then Lot believed in him (Abraham) and he said: ‘I am a fugitive unto my Lord, for verily He is the Mighty, the Wise.”

Sometimes there had been several Divine prophets at the same time among people, but only one of them had been Imam and leader.

This holy verse points to the Faith of Lot and migration of Abraham when it says:

“Then Lot believed in him (Abraham)…”

Lot was one of the great prophets of Allah and he was a close relative of Abraham; (it is said that he was Abraham’s nephew) and in view of the fact that following a great person is as following an Ummah, Allah here specially speaks of Lot’s faith, the great personality contemporary to Abraham, in order to make clear that if others did not believe it would not have been important.

Of course, it seems that there were some receptive hearts in the land of Babylon to accept the invitation of Abraham, and after observing that great miracle they believed in him, but they were a minority.

Then the verse adds:

“…and he said: ‘I am a fugitive unto my Lord, for verily He is the Mighty, the Wise.”

It is clear that when the Divine leaders had fulfilled their mission in a region and the atmosphere of the environment was so polluted and under the pressure of the tyrants that it stopped the progress of their invitation, they ought to migrate from that place to another region so that they can spread the invitation of Allah.

Abraham (as) accompanied with Lot and his wife (Sarah) also started to go to Syria, the site of Divine prophets and Monotheism, in order to be able to gather some persons and means for developing the invitation of Monotheism.

It is interesting that Abraham (as) says:

“I am a fugitive unto my Lord”.

The reason was that this path was the path of Allah, the Almighty, the path of His pleasure, and the path of His religion.

Of course, some commentators have said that probably the pronoun in the Qur’anic word /qala/ refers to Lot; that is, Lot said that he is fugitive unto his Lord. The apparent of the sentence is consistent to this meaning, but the historical and Qur’anic evidence shows that the antecedent is Abraham and the emigration of Lot (as) was done in subordination to Abraham (as).

The Qur’anic evidence of this statement is Surah As-Saffat, No. 37, verse 99 that from the tongue of Abraham says:

“He said: ‘I will go to my Lord! He will surely guide me’.”1