337. The wrong committed by Prophet Dawood.
Many scholars, in the name of exegesis for this verse (38:21-25) have spun several unacceptable yarns.
It is being said by these people, that Prophet Dawood already had 99 wives and took hold of another one by murdering her husband. There is no acceptable proof for this, and some tales from the Judeo- Christian scriptures have been taken to substantiate this claim.
These people do not have the basic knowledge that messengers of God will not indulge in such inhuman, base, brutal acts.
Here in this verse, the Almighty talks of an error by Prophet Dawood that was rectified by him when pointed out. Something more than enough to learn a lesson from.
There are no details either in the Quran or the sunnah of Prophet Muhammad regarding the mistake committed, but can be realized from the verse.
A dispute is brought to the notice of Prophet Dawood, by two people wherein one says “ he has 99 goats with him and I have one, he wants to take the one from me”. After delivering the verdict in this case, Prophet Dawood prayed for forgiveness, realizing the two were angels sent by the Almighty pointing out an error by him.
Since Prophet Dawood realized the nature of the dispute it seemed to him to point out a similar error by him, hence it can be concluded as something of the same had taken place involving him.
The nature of this case is to point out acquisition of something trivial, by someone who has a lot of possessions.
Prophet Dawood would never have realized the mistake he had committed in acquiring something from someone, though he had the same thing in abundance.
Generally such a situation does occur, when an act is committed by someone as a ruler.
Since Prophet Dawood was a ruler, situations like legal acquisition of a subject’s land for people’s welfare, or legal acquisition of a subject’s horse, for addition to state’s arsenal, or acquisition of a fiefdom’s land area to be added to his kingdom could have taken place, and it could never be something like taking another’s wife as his own.
