وَٱذْكُرْ إِسْمَٰعِيلَ وَٱلْيَسَعَ وَذَا ٱلْكِفْلِ وَكُلٌّ مِّنَ ٱلْأَخْيَارِ
The fourth and last wa'dhkur command of the sūra. And this time there is no note of ʿabdanā / ʿibādanā — the names are given directly.
ٱلْيَسَع — Elisha. He occurs in two places in the Qurʾān: here and al-Anʿām 6/86. In both he is inside a list.
ذَا ٱلْكِفْل — Dhū'l-Kifl. He occurs in two places in the Qurʾān: here and al-Anbiyāʾ 21/85. In the occurrence in al-Anbiyāʾ he is named together with Ishmael and Idrīs and is described as mina'ṣ-ṣābirīn (among the patient).
The meaning of the name is dwelt on: kifl — root ك-ف-ل. And this root occurred in the twenty-third verse: akfilnīhā — "make her over to me, put her in my charge."
| View | What Dhū'l-Kifl means |
|---|---|
| Possessor of a portion | One given a double share |
| The one who takes on | One who takes a responsibility upon himself, who gives his word and keeps it |
Various views about his identity are transmitted in the classical sources, and there is no agreement among them. I do not go into the detail: the Qurʾān gives no information about this person beyond his name and two descriptions of him (mina'l-akhyār here, mina'ṣ-ṣābirīn in al-Anbiyāʾ 21/85). Where the text is silent I am silent.
The forty-seventh verse ended with al-muṣṭafayna'l-akhyār; the forty-eighth ends with mina'l-akhyār.
The same word, in two consecutive verses. This is a repetition that can be verified from the text, and it serves as a seal closing the section on the prophets.
And kullun — "all". No distinction is made, that is: the one whose account is told and the one whose name alone occurs are in the same class.
From the seventeenth verse to the forty-eighth, nine prophets are named in thirty-two verses: David, Solomon, Job, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Ishmael, Elisha, Dhū'l-Kifl.
| Verses | How many persons | How many verses | Per person |
|---|---|---|---|
| 17-26 | 1 (David) | 10 | 10 |
| 30-40 | 1 (Solomon) | 11 | 11 |
| 41-44 | 1 (Job) | 4 | 4 |
| 45-47 | 3 | 3 | 1 |
| 48 | 3 | 1 | 1/3 |
This is a countable fact. And I record it as my own reading: the section ends by quickening. The first three accounts are detailed, the last six names are almost a single breath. The telling closes by turning into a list — and immediately afterwards, in the forty-ninth verse, the whole section is named with a single word: hādhā dhikr.
And no list of miracles is given for any of the nine names. For David the mountains and the birds are named, for Solomon the wind and the jinn — but these are not the attributes counted at the close of the section: hand, eye, remembrance of the abode, chosenness, goodness.