…to be a warner alongside him, or a treasure be cast down to him, or he have a garden from which he may eat?’ The wrongdoers also said, ‘You are following only a man who is under a spell.’ Look at how they coin parables about you; they have gone astray and can find no way.” (al-Furqan 7–9)

—and up to His words: “We never sent before you any messengers but that they ate food and walked in the marketplaces” (al-Furqan 20), that is, they earned their living and traded in pursuit of lawful profit. When Allah later prescribed jihad for him in Madinah, he lived on what Allah made lawful for him from the spoils—booty that had never been permitted to any prophet before him—and on what Allah caused to revert to him from the unbelievers’ wealth, which was made lawful for him alone.

As is related in the Musnad and by al-Tirmidhi from Ibn ʿUmar, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “I was sent with the sword just before the Hour so that Allah alone would be worshipped with no partner. My provision has been placed beneath the shade of my spear. Humiliation and abasement have been decreed for whoever opposes my command, and whoever imitates a people is one of them.” 1

As for the softening of iron for him (upon him be peace), it was one of the manifest miracles: iron would become pliant in his hands without fire, as dough softens in the hand. From it he fashioned those Davidic coats of mail—ample shirts of interlinked rings—and Allah Most High instructed him how to make them, saying, “And measure well the links” (Sabaʾ 11), meaning: do not drive the rivet so thin that it slips, nor make it so thick that it breaks, as is reported in al-Bukhari. 2

He also said, “We taught him the craft of making garments (of armor) for you, to shield you from your violence; will you then be grateful?” (al-Anbiyaʾ 80).

A poet, alluding to prophetic miracles, said:
David’s weaving was what protected the Man of the Cave,
while the spider’s own fine work became his pottery.

Our concern here is the miracle of iron made soft. In the Sirah, at the account of the digging of the trench in the Year of the Confederates—reckoned as the fourth year, though some say the fifth—it is related that they came upon a kudyah, a boulder embedded in the ground, which they could not break at all. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ approached—he had tied a stone to his belly because of severe hunger—and struck it three times. The first blow flashed, showing him the palaces of Syria; the second revealed the palaces of Persia; and the third likewise. Then the rock crumbled as though it were a dune of sand. Surely a rock disintegrating—when even fire cannot affect it—is more wondrous than iron becoming soft once it is heated.

As another poet said:
Had you tried to soften her heart’s hardness with my very soul,
even the solid boulder would have yielded.

Al-jandal means “rock.” If anything harder than stone existed, that hyperbolic poet would have named it. Allah the Exalted says, “Then, after that, your hearts grew hard—like stones, or even harder” (al-Baqarah 74).

And as for His words…