One Seed, Seven Ears

A few examples are given here by Allah (swt), and very vivid and graphic ones. He says that the way of spending in the path of Allah — where, as was suggested, we wish to see our money increase, whereas the dīn is wholly concerned with the ghayb — is thus:

Take a farmer who puts in one seed of corn — one seed of wheat. It produces its plant, and within that plant there will be seven ears of corn, or seven ears of barley or of wheat. Each one of those seven will have seventy seeds within it.^* So the one seed has multiplied to seven times seventy. Let anyone do that arithmetic: seven times seventy — that is what comes of it.

The other example Allah (swt) gives is its opposite: those who spend, and may even spend in the path of Allah, building great mosques perhaps, but do it for show, for a wrong reason, without sincerity, with some ulterior motive. Allah says:

This is verse 264, which speaks of another farmer, who finds a place and thinks it looks very promising; but what it is, is great boulders with a thin covering of soil upon them. Someone has scattered a little earth there, and he goes and puts his seed in it. Then the rain comes — a little rain, no more — and washes the soil and the seed and everything away, and he is left with nothing. So though he may have done something great and produced something large, nothing comes of it.

Hence sincerity, the ikhlāṣ of one pound, one dollar, one rupee spent in the path of Allah, is immense beside a far greater sum spent without any sincerity at all. Such are the examples given in these verses.