Patience: The Training of Mūsā and Nūḥ

Second, it teaches them patience. Taking sheep out to graze, they take their time, they're slow, and you have to wait — you have to be patient. They might end up fighting with each other, they might end up playing with each other. You have to wait, you have to be patient, and you can't really tell them, "Come on, guys, finish up, we have to leave" — you can't. They're going to take their time, and you have to sit there waiting. You see shepherds sometimes, when their sheep are grazing, they'll just sit on a rock and wait until the sheep have their fill. So it teaches patience, and you're doing this day in and day out, on a daily basis. You leave in the morning, you come back at sunset, and you have to be patient with these animals. You have to bear with them, even if you're not communicating well with them, and if they're not communicating well with you, you still have to be patient and bear with them. So the prophets learn to be very, very patient with their people.

Look at what Mūsā (peace be upon him) went through with Banī Isrāʾīl — unbearable. But Mūsā had a training in shepherding longer than maybe any other prophet: he was a shepherd for ten years. When he left Egypt and got married to the daughter of Shuʿayb, what did his father-in-law tell him? "You will work for me eight years, or ten." So the contract was eight years, and then he told him, "And if you want to add two years to that, it's a favour that you would do me." The āyah in the Qur'an doesn't state whether Mūsā worked for eight or ten. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) wanted to know, so he asked Jibrīl. He said, "How long did Mūsā work?" Jibrīl told him, Atamma al-ajalayni wa akmalahā: he worked the more complete and perfect of the two terms — in other words, ten years. Being a prophet of Allah, he's going to do the best job — so even though the contract stated eight years, he did ten.

Mūsā (peace be upon him) went through a lot, but he was patient — he was patient with his people. Nūḥ (peace be upon him): nine hundred and fifty years in daʿwah, and he was still patient with his people. He tried every different way. Daʿawtu... laylan wa nahāran, sirran wa jihāran: I tried publicly and privately, I tried at night and daytime, I tried every way, and they were rejecting my message. Imagine doing the same thing, meeting the same people who are turning you down, for nine hundred and fifty years.