al-Aʿrāf 7:54

Inna rabbakumu'llāhu'lladhī khalaqa's-samāwāti wa'l-arḍa fī sittati ayyāmin thumma'stawā ʿala'l-ʿarsh, yughshi'l-layla'n-nahāra yaṭlubuhū ḥathīthā, wa'sh-shamsa wa'l-qamara wa'n-nujūma musakhkharātin bi-amrih, alā lahu'l-khalqu wa'l-amr, tabāraka'llāhu rabbu'l-ʿālamīn

"Your Lord is God, who created the heavens and the earth in six days, then mounted the Throne. He covers the day with the night — the night pursues it swiftly. And the sun, the moon and the stars are made subservient by His command. His alone are the creating and the command. Blessed is God, the Lord of all the worlds!"

This verse opens the fifth block of the sūra (54-58), and what opens the block is a change of address. Up to the fifty-third verse the scene was in the hereafter; the fifty-fourth turns directly to the addressee: inna rabbakum.

I record this as an observation about word order: the scene of the hereafter closes with ḍalla ʿanhum mā kānū yaftarūn — what was invented disappears. Immediately afterwards comes the description of the real Lord. The place that has been emptied is filled.

This expression was treated in the index at 50/38 in Qāf and at 41/9-12 in Fuṣṣilat. I rely on those treatments and keep both notes here too:

One — the note at 50/38 in Qāf: the word ي-و-م in Arabic does not mean only "a twenty-four-hour day"; the primary sense of the root is a stretch of time, a period. How long the six "days" lasted is not stated and is not known.

Two — the note at 41/9-12 in Fuṣṣilat: modern cosmology is not dressed onto these verses; the days are not equated with geological ages. Such an equation would be to make the text say what it does not say (Method).

These two limits hold here as well, and I do not repeat them.

What belongs here is what follows the expression, and this differs in the three sūras:

Three sūras tie the same expression to three different places: one to power, one to measure, one to governance. I record this as an observation.

Per the method (Method) I enter a note about this phrase, and I do not open the debate.

At 40/7 in Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin) the note kept consistently throughout the index for expressions concerning the Throne was entered, and I rely on it: these expressions cannot be understood so as to ascribe place, body or movement to God. Two chief attitudes are transmitted in the classical commentaries for verses of this kind:

I convey both and impose no preference. The same note was entered at 32/4 in al-Sajda and at 20/5 in Ṭāhā; the shared principle is al-Shūrā 42/11. I do not repeat it, and I enter into no polemic of kalām (Method).

What belongs here is only a datum of the text, and it was counted at 20/5 in Ṭāhā: the phrase occurs in seven places in the Qurʾān — al-Aʿrāf 7/54, Yūnus 10/3, al-Raʿd 13/2, Ṭāhā 20/5, al-Furqān 25/59, al-Sajda 32/4, al-Ḥadīd 57/4. This verse is the first of those seven.

The Qurʾān tells of night and day following one another with several different pictures. Two of them were treated in the index; this is the third, and I compare the three in a table:

The concrete senses of the three roots must be recorded separately:

• و-ل-ج — to enter through a narrow place. Wulūj — entry. Picture: passing one within the other.
• ك-و-ر — to wind a thing by folding. Kawr — the winding of a turban. Picture: winding over.
• غ-ش-و — to cover a thing over, to overspread. Ghishāwa — the film that comes over the eye (it occurred at 45/23 in al-Jāthiya). Picture: closing over the top.
• ط-ل-ب — to seek, to look for, to go after. Picture: coming from behind.

حَثِيثًا — the root ح-ث-ث: to urge on, to go continuously and fast. Ḥaththa — he drove without stopping, he urged on. Ḥathīth means "without any halt and fast". The word in this pattern occurs only here in the Qurʾān; this is a countable datum.

And the difference of the three pictures is worth recording. I give this as my own reading and it is not binding; its ground is the concrete senses of the three roots:

The third row is what belongs to al-Aʿrāf alone: only here is there a note of speed, and only here is the movement one-directional.

And this accords with the rest of the sūra — I give this as a reading: al-Aʿrāf is the sūra that tells of something that comes in haste. In the fourth verse the destruction had come bayātan aw hum qāʾilūn (by night or in the noon sleep); in the thirty-fourth the term was not delayed by even an hour. The ḥathīthā of the fifty-fourth verse is the picture of the same line on the scale of the universe.

On the connection with natural science I draw the limit: no conclusion about planetary motion, rotational speed or the terminator line is to be drawn from this. The verse builds the picture of an observation: on the horizon, darkness coming swiftly after light. This is a fact everyone sees with his own eyes, and it is what the verse uses (Method).

The root س-خ-ر: to make a thing subservient to a work, to set it to service.

And the closing of the verse must be recorded: alā lahu'l-khalqu wa'l-amr. Two words are set side by side, and both had occurred within the verse:

That is, the closing sentence gathers the verse's own two halves. I record this as an observation about word order.

And the lexicographers give the difference of the two words thus: khalq is to bring into being, amr is to govern what has been brought into being. The sentence ties both at once to the same place — and this is the ground of what will be repeated in the later sections of the sūra: the one who creates is the one who lays down the ruling (see 7/32, 7/33, 7/70).

تَبَارَكَ — the root ب-ر-ك: a thing's being fixed and lasting; and from this, blessing, increasing good. The pattern is Form VI, and the lexicographers give here the sense "the fixedness of loftiness and abundance". The word will occur once more in this sūra, at the ninety-sixth verse, in the form barakāt.