40ما كانَ مُحَمَّدٌ أَبا أَحَدٍ مِن رِجالِكُم وَلٰكِن رَسولَ اللَّهِ وَخاتَمَ النَّبِيّينَ ۗ وَكانَ اللَّهُ بِكُلِّ شَيءٍ عَليمًاMuhammad Asad[And know, O believers, that] Muhammad is not the father of any one of your men,1 but is God's Apostle and the Seal of all Prophets.2 And God has indeed full knowledge of everything.I.e., he is the spiritual "father" of the whole community (cf. note 8 on verse 6 of this surah), and not of any one person or particular persons thus, incidentally, refuting the erroneous idea that physical descent from a prophet confers, by itself, any merit on the persons concerned.I.e., the last of the prophets, just as a seal (khatam) marks the end of a document; apart from this, the term khatam is also synonymous with khitam, the "end" or "conclusion" of a thing: from which it follows that the message revealed through Muhammad the Qur'an - must be regarded as the culmination and the end of all prophetic revelation (cf. note 66 on the first sentence of the second paragraph of 5:48, and note 126 on 7:158). See also note 102 on 21:107.