As-Saaffaat (Those drawn up in Ranks)

123. “And verily Elyas was of the apostles.”

124. “When he said to his people: ‘Will you not be in owe (of Allah)?’”

125. “Do you call on Ba‘l and abandon the best of the creators?”

The fourth life story, which is mentioned in Surah, out of the life stories of the former prophets, is the short biography of Elyas.

It says:

“And verily Elyas was of the apostles.”

There is no doubt that Elyas (as) is one of the prophets of Allah, and the verse under discussion has explicitly stated this matter.

The name of this Divine prophet has been mentioned in two verses of the Qur’an, once in this very Surah, As-Saffat, and the other one is mentioned is Surah Al-’An‘am, No. 6, verse 85. However, there are different stories and various matters about this Divine prophet recorded in books.

You may refer to the commentary books of Majma‘-ul-Bayan, Al-Mizan, Rauh-ul-Bayan, Al-Kabir by Fakhr-i-Razi, Fi-Zalal, ’A‘lam-ul-Qur’an, and Encyclopaedia by Dehkhuda.

In the second verse, it implicitly announces that they ought to remember the following event:

“When he said to his people: ‘Will you not be in owe (of Allah)?’”

This statement points to the subjects of godliness, avoiding from polytheism and idolatry, from sins, injustice, and corruptions and from whatever drives man into destruction.

With a more precision, in the third verse it says:

“Do you call on Ba‘l and abandon the best of the creators?”

It is understood from this verse that they had a famous idol by the name of Ba‘l, in front of which they fell themselves in prostration, and Elyas dissuaded them from that ugly action and invited them toward the great Creator of the world and pure Unity.

It is for this reason that some commentators believe that the centre of the activity of Elyas was Ba‘labak, one of the cities of Syria since the name of that special idol was Ba‘l, and /bak/ meant ‘city’ and with the combination of those two parts the word Ba‘lbak had been formed.

It has been said that this long idol had been so big that the length of it was nearly twenty one meters and it had four faces with a few guards.

But some other commentators have not considered Ba‘l as the name of a definite idol and they have taken it as the absolute name of idol, while some others use it as the concept of Rabb (lord) and object of worship. Raqib in Mufradat says:

“Originally /ba‘l/ means husband, but Arabs use the objects by which they drew nigh to God called Ba‘l.”