"Call Upon Me": Verse 40:60 and the Two Ways of the Heart

Verse 40:60 contains one of the most tender invitations in the whole Quran, and also one of its clearest warnings. In a single breath, God says: call upon Me, and I will answer you. Then, immediately, He warns that those who are too proud to worship Him will enter Hell in disgrace. One verse, two stances, two destinies. The heart can turn upward, or it can turn in on itself in pride. This dossier follows that double movement through the Quran: what it means to call on God, how He answers, what pride does to a person, and why the two cannot live in the same heart.

An invitation spoken directly

What makes [40:60] remarkable is its grammar of intimacy. The verb udʿūnī comes from the root d-ʿ-w, "to call, to invoke, to summon," and its form here is the imperative with a direct object joined to the pronoun: "call Me" — not just "call to God," but "call Me," as one calls someone who is near. The answer comes in the same breath: astajib lakum, from j-w-b, "to respond," "to answer a call." The Quran uses this same verb elsewhere to describe God's closeness: in [2:186], God declares that He is near and answers the call of the caller when he calls upon Him. The two verses form a pair: [40:60] is the command, [2:186] the reassurance. Together they say that invocation is not a ritual performed at a distance; it is a conversation in which both sides are present.

The promise of the answer

The Quran repeatedly insists that God answers. In [2:186] the word used for the one who calls is ad-dāʿī, "the caller," and God's response is His own promise, without intermediaries or conditions of eloquence. In [27:62], God asks a striking question: who is the One who answers ad-dārra, "the distressed one," when he calls upon Him, and removes the harm? The verse is phrased as a rhetorical question so that the reader supplies the obvious answer: only God. In [40:60] the promise is general; in [27:62] it is vivid and personal — the person in distress, the harm removed. And in [2:152], God joins remembrance and gratitude to invocation: remember Me and I remember you, be thankful to Me and do not be ungrateful. Calling on God is thus one half of a relationship whose other half is remembering Him.

How to call, and how not to

The Quran also gives instructions about the manner of calling. [7:55-56] teaches that one should call upon one's Lord with humility and in secret — tadarruʿan wa khufyatan, two adverbs meaning "in humble pleading" and "in hiddenness" — and that one should not make mischief on earth after it has been set in order. The word tadarruʿ comes from the root d-r-ʿ, evoking a low, broken voice, like someone begging softly. In [17:110], the believer is told to call upon God or call upon the All-Merciful; whichever name is used, to Him belong the most beautiful names, and the prayer should be neither too loud nor too silent but somewhere in between. Invocation, then, is described in [40:60] with the simplest of verbs, but the Quran everywhere colors it with gentleness: it is the speech of a humble heart, not a loud transaction.

Pride: the root word of the warning

The second half of [40:60] turns on one key word: yastakbirūna, from k-b-r, "to be great," in the reflexive form X which means "to make oneself great, to consider oneself above" — to be arrogant. The Quran uses this verb many times, and its contexts reveal what arrogance does. In [96:6-7], the first revealed passage of the Quran, we read that man becomes rebellious when he sees himself as self-sufficient: the key phrase is an yarāhu ghaniyyan, "that he sees himself as rich, in need of nothing." Pride, in the Quran's eyes, is a lie a person tells himself about his own independence. In [2:206], the same reflexive root appears: when he is told to fear God, pride (istakbār) seizes him in sin. Arrogance in [40:60] is precisely this: not that the arrogant person denies God with his mouth necessarily, but that he refuses to bend — refusing to worship is the refusal to bow.

Calling only when the waves rise

The Quran paints a piercing picture of the divided stance of the human being. In [29:65] and again in [31:32], we see people calling upon God sincerely (mukhliṣīna lahu d-dīn, "making religion pure for Him") when a storm or shipwreck threatens them — and then, when He saves them and brings them to land, some of them fall back into associating partners with Him. [10:22-23] describes the same cycle at sea: they call God, making their religion sincerely His, and when He delivers them, they commit injustice on earth. And [39:8] shows the man in hardship calling upon his Lord, then forgetting Him when blessings come and saying to the idols, "this is only because of you." These passages explain why [40:60] matters so much: calling on God is easy in a storm; the stance of a lifetime is calling on Him in calm weather too. The question in [6:40-41] presses the point: whom would you really call in a crisis, if you are honest?

The deafness of the dead heart

Why do the arrogant not call? The Quran suggests that pride does not only stop the voice — it stops the hearing. In [27:80] and [30:52], God says that you cannot make the dead hear, nor the deaf hear the call (duʿāʾ) when they turn their backs. In [8:24], the believer is called to respond to God and His Messenger when they call him to what gives him life — the word yaṣtajib, again from j-w-b, the mirror of God's own response in [40:60]: God calls, we answer, just as we call and He answers. The relationship is symmetrical. And in [13:14], the Quran states that to God belongs the true call (ad-duʿāʾu l-ḥaqq), while those whom people call besides Him do not answer at all — like one who stretches his hands toward water asking it to reach his mouth, though it cannot. Pride is thus a kind of spiritual deafness: the arrogant one in [40:60] is one who does not hear the invitation because he has decided he needs no answer.

Calling on others: a dead end

The other side of the warning in [40:60] is the practice of calling on someone or something other than God. [46:5] asks pointedly: who is further astray than one who calls upon others besides God, who will not answer him until the Day of Resurrection and are unaware of his call? The Quran gives the image of someone calling in a valley that echoes — the call returns empty. In [7:194], those whom people call upon besides God are described as slaves like their callers. And in [35:13-14], the contrast is drawn explicitly: only God hears, and even if He answered you, they could not remove harm or change it. Against this backdrop, [40:60] becomes a choice between two calls: calling the One who says "I will answer you," or calling on things that cannot answer at all. The arrogance named in the verse is, at bottom, the refusal of this simple arithmetic.

Remembering Him: the quiet form of calling

Invocation in the Quran is wider than asking for things. [50:16] famously says that God is closer to the human being than his jugular vein — a verse that makes [40:60] feel less like an invitation across a distance and more like an opening of a door already ajar. [13:28] declares that hearts find rest in the remembrance of God, and the root dh-k-r, "to remember, to mention," runs through the whole book: [2:152] joins remembrance to gratitude, [3:41] has the messenger Zechariah told to remember God much and glorify Him in the morning and evening, and [24:37] praises those whom neither trade nor selling distracts from remembering God, keeping prayer and giving alms. Calling on God, in this wider sense, is simply keeping the line open — not only in crisis but in the ordinary hours of the day.

Two outcomes in one verse

The ending of [40:60] is stark: the arrogant will enter Hell, dākhirīn — a word meaning "in a state of humiliation, brought low, disgraced." The word is the exact opposite of the opening gesture of the verse. Calling on God is an act of voluntary humility; pride is a self-elevation that ends in being brought low. The Quran makes this contrast elsewhere: [57:9] speaks of God making clear signs so that people may be brought from darkness into light, and [40:65], just a few verses after our verse, proclaims that God is the Ever-Living, so call upon Him (udʿūhu), making religion sincerely His — the same root d-ʿ-w returning to close the circle. The two stances of [40:60] are therefore not just about what we say with our lips, but about which direction the whole self is facing: toward the One who invites, or toward the small fortress of one's own sufficiency, which the Quran elsewhere warns will crumble [25:43].

The beauty of verse [40:60] is that it places the two destinies side by side without hiding either of them. The invitation is open, repeated, and unconditional in its offer: call, and I answer. The warning exists only because the invitation is being refused. Between the two stands the humble heart — the caller of [2:186], the distressed one of [27:62], the one who remembers in calm as in storm — for whom the promise of the verse is not a threat but a homecoming.