﴿72﴾ “Or do you ask them for payment? Yet your Lord’s reward is better, and He is the best of providers.”

That is: Or, Muhammad, were they prevented from following you because you ask them for payment in return for accepting your call, “so that they are burdened by debt,” finding it costly to follow you because of the payment and levy you collect from them? That is not the case. “Yet your Lord’s reward is better, and He is the best of providers.” This is just as the prophets said to their peoples: “O my people, I ask of you no payment for it; my reward is only with Allah.” That is, they did not call people out of a desire to obtain wealth from them. Rather, they called them out of sincere concern for them and a desire to secure their welfare. Indeed, the messengers were more sincerely concerned for people than people were for themselves. May Allah reward them on behalf of their nations with the finest reward and grant us the ability to follow their example in all circumstances.