Surah Hud, Verse 69/70

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*Surah Hud, Verse 69:*

وَلَقَدْ جَاءَتْ رُسُلُنَا إِبْرَاهِيمَ بِالْبُشْرَىٰ قَالُوا سَلَامًا قَالَ سَلَامٌ فَمَا لَبِثَ أَن جَاءَ بِعِجْلٍ حَنِيذٍ

And verily, there came Our Messengers to Ibrahim (Abraham) with glad tidings. They said: Salam (greetings or peace!) He answered, Salam (greetings or peace!) and he hastened to entertain them with a roasted calf.

#COMMENTARY

According to the sequence of Sūra vii, the next reference should be to the story of Lūt, and that story commences at chapter xi, verse 77 below, but it is introduced by a brief reference to an episode in the life of his uncle Abraham, from whose seed sprang the peoples to whom Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad Al-Mustafā were sent with the major Revelations. Abraham had by this time passed through the fire of persecution in the Mesopotamian valleys: he had left behind him the ancestral idolatry of Ur of the Chaldees; he had been tried and he had triumphed over the persecution of Nimrūd: he had now taken up his residence in Canaan, from which his nephew Lot (Lūt) was called to preach to the wicked Cities of the Plain east of the Dead sea which is itself called Bahr Lūt. Thus prepared and sanctified, he was now ready to receive the Message that he was chosen to the progenitor of a great line of Prophets, and that Message is now referred to.

Can we localise Nimrūd? If local tradition in place-names can be relied upon, this king must have ruled over the tract which includes the modern Nimrūd, on the Tigris, about twenty miles south of Mosul. This is the site of Assyrian ruins of great interest, but the rise of Assyria as an Empire was of course much later than the time of Abraham. The Assyrian city was called Kalakh (or Calah), and archaeological excavations carried out there have yielded valuable results, which are however irrelevant for our Commentary.

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*Surah Hud, Verse 70:*

فَلَمَّا رَأَىٰ أَيْدِيَهُمْ لَا تَصِلُ إِلَيْهِ نَكِرَهُمْ وَأَوْجَسَ مِنْهُمْ خِيفَةً قَالُوا لَا تَخَفْ إِنَّا أُرْسِلْنَا إِلَىٰ قَوْمِ لُوطٍ

But when he saw their hands went not towards it (the meal), he felt some mistrust of them, and conceived a fear of them. They said: "Fear not, we have been sent against the people of Lout (Lot)."

#COMMENTARY

Abraham received the strangers with a salutation of Peace, and immediately placed before them a sumptuous meal of roasted calf. The strangers were embarrassed. They were angels and did not eat. If hospitality is refused, it means that those who refuse it meditate no good to the would be host. Abraham therefore had a feeling of mistrust and fear in his mind, which the strangers at once set at rest by saying that their mission was in the first place to help Lūt as a warner to the Cities of Plain. But in the second place they had good news for Abraham: he was to be the father of great peoples!

The people of Lūt means the people to whom Lūt was sent on his mission of warning, the people of the wicked Cities of the Plain, Sodom and Gomorrah.