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What is meant is not collecting firewood in particular; rather, the point is to seek a livelihood by any lawful means, for that is better than asking people. As for the many avenues of earning, each person is facilitated toward what he was created to do.
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The ḥadith urges the able Muslim to work and achieve self-sufficiency, so that he will not be a burden on society—an idle member who neither benefits nor is benefited—commensurate with the strength and talents Allah has granted him.
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It likewise encourages abstaining from begging and keeping one’s dignity above it, even if that requires a person to undertake humble work and bear hardship in pursuit of his provision.
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Asking one’s parents, one’s child, or one spouse asking the other is not considered begging, for no favor is owed in such cases. The Exalted says: “There is no blame upon yourselves that you eat from your own houses …” (Sūrah al-Nūr 24:61).
Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr said: “An income that involves some menial labor is better than asking people, whether they give or withhold.”
Difference among the scholars
The jurists have differed over which occupation is superior for earning a livelihood:
• Al-Shāfiʿī held that it is commerce.
• Al-Māwardī said: “What seems more likely to me is that farming brings greater blessing, because it is closer to relying on Allah.”
• Al-Nawawī stated: “The best of them is what the ḥadith explicitly mentions: ‘No one has ever eaten food better than that which he eats from the work of his own hand.’” Narrated by al-Bukhārī (1696).
If a man’s handiwork is agriculture, then that is the purest and most excellent form of earning: it is the work of his own hands, it embodies reliance upon Allah, it provides broad benefit to Muslims and animals alike, and people customarily partake of it without payment, so he gains reward for that. Further discussion will follow—God willing—in the chapter on food.