Giving charity in a dream

When some of the Prophet's wives asked which of them would be the first to follow him in death, he answered: the one with the longest hand. They took a stick and measured their arms against one another (Bukhari 1420). It only became clear when Zaynab bint Jahsh died first, and then, in Aisha's telling, they knew that the long hand meant giving charity.

That story is not a dream, and we are not claiming it is. But it is the nearest the Sunnah comes to a symbol of charity, and it carries a lesson about method: the phrase was read after the event, by people who knew the person and what she did with her hands. A dream of giving charity has no such report. What the Qur'an and hadith do hold are pictures of what a gift does and warnings about how it can be spoiled, and those pictures are what we have to read the dream by.

A growing seed and a washed-out stone

The Qur'an draws a gift in two main ways. The first is growth. Those who spend in Allah's way are like a seed that sprouts seven spikes with 100 grains in each, and Allah multiplies for whom He wills (Qur'an 2:261). Charity taken from wealth purifies the giver and makes him increase (Qur'an 9:103), and Allah gives increase for charities where He destroys interest (Qur'an 2:276). The second picture is loss, and it is drawn with unusual care. A person who follows his gift with reminders or injury, or who gives only to be seen, is likened to a smooth stone with dust on it that a downpour leaves bare (Qur'an 2:264). A few verses later a downpour falls on a garden on high ground, and the garden yields double (Qur'an 2:265).

Same rain, opposite result. What differs is what the gift was for, and that makes this a striking piece of imagery for a reader of dreams: the Qur'an itself reads one event two ways according to the heart behind it. In a dream the heart is hard to see, which is one reason we would not take a dream of giving as a verdict on anyone's sincerity. Rain and gardens have their own entries, rain and a garden.

What the hadith say a gift does

The Prophet ﷺ gave charity a list of effects. It extinguishes sins as water extinguishes fire (Tirmidhi 2616, which the graders listed with it call sahih or hasan). It shields from the Fire even when all a person has is half a date (Bukhari 1417). It does not decrease wealth (Muslim 2588). And the person who gives so quietly that his left hand does not know what his right has given is one of the seven whom Allah shades on the day when there is no other shade (Bukhari 1423, Muslim 1031a). The Qur'an agrees that giving in secret is better and removes some misdeeds, while giving openly is still good, and those who give by night and by day, secretly and publicly, have their reward with their Lord (Qur'an 2:271, Qur'an 2:274).

Two points carry over to a dream. The size of the gift is not the measure: the Prophet's own example is half a date, so a dream in which you give something tiny is not a lesser dream. And all of these texts are about real spending. None says that a gift made in sleep counts as a deed, and the rewards they promise are tied to the act. If a dream of giving feels good, that is a fair thing to be glad of. It is not a credit.

The gift that landed in the wrong hands

One more hadith belongs here, because it speaks to a case a dream could easily show: giving to someone you would never have chosen. A man resolved to give charity and, without knowing it, put it into the hand of a thief. In the morning people were talking about it. He praised Allah and gave again, and it went to an adulteress, and then again, to a rich man. After the third time someone came to him and told him that the thief might be restrained from theft by it, the woman from her sin, and the rich man might learn to spend what Allah had given him (Bukhari 1421). In Muslim's version the one who comes tells him his charity has been accepted (Muslim 1022).

It is not a dream, and neither report says how the man was told. What it fixes is that a gift can be accepted although it landed in hands the giver would not have chosen. If your dream had the money going astray, refused, or taken by the wrong person, we know of no text that reads that badly. The hand image has its own entry, the hand in a dream, and so does the thing that usually changes hands, money.