11. Hud

And I do not say to you, �I possess the treasure houses of God�: in other words, I [only] claim merit [over you] on account of prophethood, and not on account of any wealth or great property, nor on account of having knowledge of the unseen or by claiming to be an angel, so that you might [justifiably] deny my merit for the absence of these [things]. Nor do I say, to the poor believers whom you scorn and regard with the eye of disdain, that God will not give them any good, as you claim, because for me 'good' is that which is with God and not property - God knows better, than me and you, what is in their souls, of good. He is best acquainted with their capacities and thoughts and none [except Him] knows the measure of their goodness, because it is tremendous. Lo! then I, that is, if I were to deny [any association of] good with them or drive them away, would be of the evildoers indeed'.

Make the ship through Our eyes and Our revelation. In keeping with the Shariah and by virtue of the outward decree, a command came, " Build a ship from teak and sit in it so as to be delivered from the storm. " In keeping with the Haqiqah and by virtue of special favor and the attribute of proximity, a call came to his secret core, " You have the ocean of the soul before you. It is a drowning, destructive ocean in which are waiting whirlpools full of danger and spirit-stealing sharks. You must cross it in order to reach the shore of security. Build a ship of self-purification in three levels: one fear, the second hope, and the third approval. Then attach to it the sail of truthfulness and set it toward the east wind of awareness of Me. " This is why He said, " through Our eyes and Our revelation: I Myself will drive it as it should be driven and where it should be driven. " He it is who makes you journey on land and sea [10:22]. And We carried them on land and sea [17:70]. By way of allusion He is saying, " My servant, turn over the governance of your work to Me, entrust yourself totally to Me, and keep your self-determination distant. You are being carried by My gentleness, and 'He who is carried by the generous does not fall. And if he does fall, he will find someone to take his hand.' " This is just what MuṣṬafā said: " You indeed will be threading a bridge of fire. If one of you treads on a spark, the bridge will say, 'Your Lord has said to shelter him!' " This is a great generos- ity and an infinite gentleness that the Exalted Lord will do for the disobedient servant tomorrow when he crosses the Narrow Path. " So, sometimes he will stop, sometime stumble, " falling and getting up. The Exalted Lord knows that the servant has no one to come to his aid but He and no one to take his hand but He. In the reports it is mentioned that God's mercy toward the servant is more than a mother's mercy toward her child. Supposing that a child's foot gets caught in the mud a thousand times, each time the mother will say, " Rise up, O soul of your mother! " Each time she will be even more tender and lovingly kind toward the child.

And he was building the Ark, to the end of this [verse]: the [literal] exegesis of this, as indicated by its apparent sense, is a reality in which one must believe and a truth which one must affirm, in accordance with what has been transmitted in the historical accounts of the details of the story of the Flood, its time, its modality and its extent. As for the [allegorical] interpretation [of this episode], it is possible to interpret the Ark as Noah's Law (sharīʿa) borne by him and those of his people who were believers like him, as the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace: 'The likeness of the family of my house is the likeness of Noah's Ark: whose comes on board shall be saved and whoso stays behind shall drown'. And the Flood [may be interpreted] as the mastery acquired by the sea of primordial substrata and the destruction of all those who did not disengage from that [substrata] by following a prophet and cleansing their souls. Similarly, of the words of the prophet Enoch (Idrīs), peace be upon him, and of his conversations with his soul something has been related to the effect that this world is like a sea that is brimming full with water, and so if you manage to find a ship to ride upon the destruction of the body you will be delivered from it to your world; otherwise, you will drown therein and perish. On the basis of that, the meaning of 'and he was building the Ark' would be: he was adopting a Law from the wooden boards of righteous deeds and the nails of the forms of knowledge by which deeds are arranged and confirmed; and whenever a council of his people passed him, they scoffed at him: as you know is the case with scoundrels and profligates notorious for their licentiousness (ibāḥā), scoffing at adherents of the [divine] Law who are restricted by its constraints. He said, 'Though you scoff at us, in your ignorance, yet we scoff at you, upon the manifestation of the awful nature of the consequence of your disbelief and your veiledness, even as you scoff;

and you shall know, then, to whom will come a chastisement that will degrade him, in this world in the way of destruction, death, sickness, harm, hardship or poverty and how he will be perturbed and distressed at what he is losing, and upon whom an enduring chastisement will fall', an everlasting one in the Hereafter in the way of the mastery [over him] of the fires of privation and the dark configurations of vices and utter loss.

Such that when Our command came, for the destruction of your community, and the oven, of the body, overflowed, at the point of the mastery of the corrupt mixtures and the excretive moistures over the natural heat and [the mastery of] the natural potency of the primordial water over the fire of the animal spirit. Or [such that when there came] Our command for their spiritual destruction and the oven overflowed at the mastery of the water of natural vain desire over the heart and its drowning it in the primordial sea of the body. We said, 'Carry therein of every one two pairs, that is, from every kind of every species two, being their two forms, special and that of kind, which remain upon the annihilation of individuals. The meaning of the 'carrying of the two therein' is his knowledge of their subsistence with the subsistence of human spirits. For his knowledge is part of his all-subsuming ship, since it is composed of knowledge and deed. Thus its knowledge regarding the two is its carrying of the two and his knowledge concerning the two is his carrying of the two therein; and your family, and those who are joined to you in your religion and your conduct from among your kin, save those against whom the Word has already gone forth, that is, the judgement from pre-eternity that that one should be destroyed for his disbelief, and those who believe', in God from among your community.