Is Every Word of the Prophet a Revelation?

At the beginning of the Surah "Al-Najm" there are two verses, number 3 and 4, which are used to  claim that everything our dear Prophet “ Mohammad” has said is a revelation, a message from God.

بِسْمِ اللَّـهِ الرَّحْمَـٰنِ الرَّحِيم

وَالنَّجْمِ إِذَا هَوَىٰ -53:1

"By the star when it descends,"

مَا ضَلَّ صَاحِبُكُمْ وَمَا غَوَىٰ -53:2

"Your companion [Muhammad] has not strayed, nor has he erred, "

وَمَا يَنطِقُ عَنِ الْهَوَىٰ-53:3

"Nor does he speak from [his own] inclination."

إِنْ هُوَ إِلَّا وَحْيٌ يُوحَىٰ-53:4

"It is not but a revelation revealed," 

عَلَّمَهُ شَدِيدُ الْقُوَىٰ - 53:5

"Taught to him by one intense in strength"

صدق الله العلي العظيم

It can be argued that if everything the Prophet has said is a revelation, it follows that his day to day conversations with people around him are included too.  Needless to say, this does not make any sense.  We can therefore, come to the conclusion that the two verses of 53:3 and 53:4 are not meant literally.  

Looking at the verses preceding and following these two verses, it becomes clear that the context of these lines is to reassure the doubtful listeners who found the God's revelations through his Prophet Mohammad hard to believe.  It is imaginable that Quran's prophecies seemed inconceivable at the time and they still are to many at our time.

To visualize what was the circumstance in which these verses were descended to the Prophet, picture yourself talking to random strangers on a street about the last day of the world, resurrection day and afterlife. We can imagine how most people would judge us; totally out of touch with presumably the realities of the world.  

It is a natural instinct of human mind to assume what has been true for a long time in the past would necessarily remain unchanged indefinitely in the future.  We have lived on a fixed ground for thousands of years and the sun has continuously shined on the earth for all this time, why should they change suddenly at a point in future.  This is why the description of the last day of our current world in the Quran may seem unimaginable to the unbelievers.  

God has his own way to give us the chance to restructure our fundamental assumptions about life. What we conceive as an act of mother nature, in terms of an earthquake or a hurricane,  may work as a shake-up to open our eyes to the fact that the natural settings of the world are, in fact, subject to instant change.

In other words, God, through his occasional natural events, helps us realize that it is feasible for the current order of world to drastically change so that one day mountains would start moving around and the Sun would stop shining although it has not happen in thousands of years before us. 

In the later verses including number 12 of this chapter "Al-Najm" God asks the doubters if they  argue with what the Prophet has seen with his eyes, referring to the prophet seeing the angel who delivered the "Vahy" (God's words) in two occasions as described in the next verses.  This is an extraordinary event even for the Prophet since God's words had been normally descended to the his heart according to verses 26:193-194.

I hope I have managed to highlight the significance of understanding the Quran's verses in their context which is usually defined by the surrounding verses. Therefore, we can not take out one or two verses and interpret them independently. 

I also hope I have clarified that not every word of the Prophet is God's words "Vahy".  That is to say, although we hold the Prophet's own talks (Hadith) near and dear to our heart, they are not God's revelation unless they are included in the Quran.  Finally, it is my personal opinion that "Hadith" applicability is limited to the Prophet's time and his cultural environment whereas Quran is timelessly and universally true.