Ar-Room (The Romans)

40. “Allah is He Who created you, then gave you sustenance, then He shall make you die, then He shall bring you to life; is there any of your associate-gods who does anything of that? Glory be to Him and Exalted High is He far above what they associate (with Him).”

Our life and death, our past, present and future, as well as our sustenance are in the authority of Allah. In this verse, the Qur’an returns again to the subject of Origin and Resurrection which form the basic matter of many verses of this Surah, and Qualifies Allah with four attributes so that it can be both a hint to monotheism and struggle against polytheism, and a proof upon Resurrection.

It says:

“Allah is He Who created you, then gave you sustenance, then He shall make you die, then He shall bring you to life; is there any of your associate-gods who does anything of that?…” “…Glory be to Him and Exalted High is He far above what they associate (with Him).”

It is certain that none of the polytheists believed that the creation was done by idols, or that their sustenance was given by idols, or the end of their lives was under the control of the idols, because they used to consider these artificial objects of worship as a medium and some intercessors between them and Allah (s.w.t.), not the creators of the heaven and the earth and sustainers.

Therefore the answer to these questions is negative and this question is a positive interrogation with a negative sense.

Another matter which will be asked here is that they mostly did not believe in the life after death, how does the Qur’an emphasize on it here by means of the last attribute of Allah?

This application may be for the sake that the question of the life after death, as we have said in the discussion of Resurrection, has an innate aspect, and here the Holy Qur’an does not emphasize on their beliefs, but it emphasizes on their innate disposition.

Besides, sometimes it happens that when a capable speaker encounter a person who denies a matter, he mentions it among some other facts which that person accepts and he decisively emphasizes on it so that it affects on him. Now the life after death is an unbreakable relation, and regarding this logical relation both of them have been mentioned in one sentence.

However, the Qur’an implies that when all of these affairs (such as creation, sustenance and death) are in His Power, worshipping must be done only for Him, too, and the sentence:

“…Glory be to Him and Exalted High is He far above what they associate (with Him)”

restates this fact that they have made the rank of Allah extraordinarily low when they have put Allah in the row of idols and artificial objects of worship.