He said, “O blood! You have put the people to trial—be still.” So it became calm, sank, and disappeared from sight.
Abū Bakr ibn Abī al-Dunyā said:
ʿAlī ibn Abī Maryam narrated to us, from Aḥmad ibn Ḥabbāb, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, who said:
Jeremiah asked, “My Lord, which of Your servants is most beloved to You?”
He replied, “Those who remember Me the most—those whose preoccupation with My remembrance diverts them from remembering created things; those whom no whisper of mortality disturbs, nor do they entertain hopes of abiding here. When worldly ease presents itself they hold it cheap, and when it is withheld they rejoice. I infuse such people with My love and grant them beyond their highest aspirations.”
(1) A mention of the destruction of the Holy House (Jerusalem)
The Exalted has said:
“We gave Moses the Scripture and made it a guidance for the Children of Israel, saying, ‘Do not take anyone besides Me as a trustee’; (2)
O descendants of those whom We carried with Noah—indeed he was a grateful servant. (3)
And We decreed for the Children of Israel in the Scripture, ‘You will surely spread corruption in the land twice, and you will surely rise to great heights of arrogance.’ (4)
So when the time of the first of the two promises came, We sent against you servants of Ours, possessed of great might, who ravaged the very heart of your homes, and the promise was fulfilled. (5)
Then We gave you back the upper hand over them, supplied you with wealth and children, and made you greater in manpower. (6)
If you do good, you do good for yourselves; but if you do evil, it is to your own detriment. Then, when the final promise came, We sent others to darken your faces, to enter the Temple as they had entered it the first time, and to utterly destroy whatever they conquered. (7)
It may be that your Lord will show you mercy; but if you return [to sin], We shall return [to punishment], and We have made Hell a prison for the disbelievers.” (Qur’an 17:2–8)
Wahb ibn Munabbih said:
Allah revealed to a prophet from among the Children of Israel, named Jeremiah, after sins had become rampant among them: “Stand in the midst of your people and tell them that they have hearts yet do not understand, eyes yet do not see, and ears yet do not hear. I have remembered the righteousness of their forefathers, and that has inclined Me toward their children. Ask them how they found the outcome of obeying Me: did anyone who disobeyed Me ever prosper by his disobedience? Did anyone who obeyed Me ever suffer misery because of his obedience?
“Even the beasts remember their homelands and yearn for them, yet these people have abandoned the very way for which I honored their fathers and have sought honor through other means. Their scholars have denied My right; their judges have worshipped other than Me; their ascetics have not benefited from the knowledge they possess; and their rulers have lied about Me and My messengers. They have stored deceit in their hearts and trained their tongues to falsehood.
“By My majesty and My might, I shall surely unleash against them hosts (2) who neither understand their language nor recognize their faces, and who will show no mercy to their tears. I shall send upon them a harsh, tyrannical king with armies like masses of cloud and columns like mountain passes; the fluttering of his banners will be like the flight of eagles, and the charge of his horsemen like the swoop of falcons. They will turn thriving cities into ruins and leave villages desolate—woe …”