وَمَا خَلَقْتُ ٱلْجِنَّ وَٱلْإِنسَ إِلَّا لِيَعْبُدُونِ
Wa mā khalaqtu'l-jinna wa'l-insa illā li-yaʿbudūn "I created jinn and mankind only that they might serve Me."
The most quoted verse of the sūra. And because it is generally read torn away from the rest of the sūra, it must first be set back in its place.
54-55: Two commands — turn away, remind. 56: The purpose of creation. 57: "I want no provision from them, nor do I want them to feed Me." 58: "God is the Provider, the possessor of strength, the firm."
The verse stands in the middle of a three-verse block, that is. And this block answers the question the fifty-fifth verse left: if the reminder does not profit some, why is the reminder made at all?
Root: ع-ب-د. This root was analysed in full in the discussion of al-Fātiḥa 1/4 and was taken up at al-Baqara 2/21 as the Qurʾān's first command in the order of the codex. I do not repeat it.
The concrete sense of the root is to bow, to submit. But a usage in Arabic lays the word's spirit open: طَرِيق مُعَبَّد (ṭarīq muʿabbad) — a road levelled by much walking, its roughness worn away, now easy to pass along. From the same root. ʿIbāda, that is, is within the word's own logic being levelled by being trodden, having one's roughness worn away, becoming passable. Servanthood here does not mean humiliation but being worked.
And what was recorded at al-Baqara 2/21: the command comes not as "serve God" but as "serve your Lord"; the demand for service, that is, is grounded not on authority but on nurture and care.
These two findings directly determine how the fifty-sixth verse is read and are the ground of the discussion below.
A small grammatical detail: the verb should have been li-yaʿbudūnī — with the first-person yāʾ at the end (Me). In the verse the yāʾ has dropped and only the kasra remains: li-yaʿbudūn(i).
This is a situation often met with in the Qurʾān for the sake of harmony with the verse-ending, and the grammarians record it. There is no change in the sense: the object is "Me".
And the presence of the object matters: the verse does not say "that they might serve", it says "that they might serve Me". The address of the service is inside the sentence.
And the function of the pattern here: the sentence first rejects all purposes, and then excepts one.
The structure of "first deny, then except" treated in the section on al-Ikhlāṣ belongs to this family; and the use of the same pattern in a denier's mouth was recorded at al-Muddaththir 74/24.
In Arabic the particle لِ carries two separate functions, and if the two are confused the verse is read quite differently:
| Function | Its name | What it conveys | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Purpose | lām al-taʿlīl | The agent's aim | "He came in order to eat" — the aim of the coming is eating |
| Outcome | lām al-ʿāqiba / lām al-ṣayrūra | The place the act arrives at | "Pharaoh's household took him up, that he might become an enemy to them" (al-Qaṣaṣ 28/8) — this was not the aim, this was the outcome |
al-Qaṣaṣ 28/8 is a decisive example, because there it is beyond dispute that the lām conveys no purpose: Pharaoh's household did not take Moses up in order that he should become an enemy to them.
The problem is this: if this is a purpose, and the purpose is not realised (not everyone serves), a difficulty arises. A significant part of classical theological debate has turned around this verse.
| Explanation | How it resolves it |
|---|---|
| The lām is of purpose; a purpose is a command, not a compulsion | The purpose of creation is service; but a purpose does not mean the abolition of the will. A school is founded so that pupils may study; the existence of a pupil who does not study does not change the school's purpose |
| Li-yaʿbudūn = "that they might be charged with it" | The verb is understood not as "that they may serve" but as "that they may be placed under the obligation of service". This reading is widely transmitted in the classical sources |
| The lām conveys outcome | The place creation arrives at is service; everyone will submit in the end. This reading is in the minority |
| The verse means one group | Though the words jinn and ins are general, those meant are the ones who serve. This reading is criticised because it weakens the generality |
The first two explanations are the explanation of the majority and they do not exclude one another: neither ties the realisation of the purpose to necessity.
I too take the first two explanations as my basis, and my ground is in the text itself: in the fifty-fifth verse the sūra had already granted that the reminder does not profit everyone (tanfaʿu'l-muʾminīn). For it to say one verse later that the purpose is realised in everyone would be inconsistent.
This preference is not binding. And I do not go into the detail of the theological dispute — the questions of decree, of will, of guidance; this exceeds the limits of commenting on a verse, and the position taken earlier in this commentary on similar matters (in the discussion of al-Muddaththir 74/56) is preserved exactly: the text counts two things as true at once, and no side is taken.
The Qurʾān uses this pair often and the order is mostly the same: al-jinna wa'l-ins. It was treated in the section on al-Jinn in this commentary and this verse was already named there — as the proof that the jinn are under obligation.
I do not repeat it. The only thing to be added here: the verse says that responsibility is not peculiar to the human kind. "Service" here, that is, is described not as a human behaviour but as the position of a being possessed of mind and will.
And this is the objection most often levelled at the verse. It is built thus: if God created so that He might be served, this means a need or a demand; whereas God needs nothing.
And what is striking is this: the answer to the objection stands in the next verse, in the text itself.
57: mā urīdu minhum min rizqin wa mā urīdu an yuṭʿimūn — "I want no provision from them; nor do I want them to feed Me."
The text, that is, closes off the wrong conclusion that might be drawn from the fifty-sixth verse immediately after saying it.
I shall take this up in detail below in the discussion of 51/57. What is to be recorded here is this: the two verses cannot be separated. To quote the fifty-sixth verse by itself is to drop the qualification the text itself has entered.
If the root sense of ʿibāda is "to be levelled by being trodden, to become passable" — as was shown in the section on al-Fātiḥa — then the question of whom service profits is answered differently. A road becomes a road by being walked on; and it is the road that is levelled, not the one who walks on it.
I record this as the application of the analysis in al-Fātiḥa to this verse; it is my own inference, and I ascribe it to no classical exegete.
This verse is read as a sentence about "the meaning of life", and there is nothing wrong in reading it so. But attention must be paid to the form of the answer the verse gives.
And this is a form of answer different from most modern searches for meaning. The usual answers given to the question "what is the meaning of life?" propose a content: happiness, leaving a mark, loving, producing. The verse proposes no content; it gives an address.
And giving an address has a practical consequence: proposals of content cover a part of life (working, loving, producing — each has its own field). An address knows no field; every work can have a direction.