Believers, fear God and stand with the truthful. 119 It was not proper for the people of Madinah and those desert Arabs around them to hold back from following God's Messenger, and to prefer their own lives to his life. This is because whenever they suffer from thirst or weariness or hunger for God's cause, and whenever they take any step which provokes those who deny the truth, or inflicts any loss upon the enemy, it shall be counted as a good deed in the sight of God, God will not deny the righteous their reward, 120 And they expend not an expending, small or great, or transverse a vale, but it is written down unto them, so that Allah may recompense them with the best for that which they have been working. 121 ۞ And it is not for the believers to go forth [to battle] all at once. For there should separate from every division of them a group [remaining] to obtain understanding in the religion and warn their people when they return to them that they might be cautious. 122