وَٱلَّيْلِ إِذَا يَغْشَىٰهَا
Root: gh-sh-y. Its concrete sense is to spread over the top of a thing, to wrap it, to come over it and enfold it.
- غِشَاوَة (ghishāwa) — the film over the eye. It occurs at al-Baqara 2/7: "and over their eyes is a covering."
- غَاشِيَة (ghāshiya) — the thing that covers, that enfolds. The name of a sūra: "Has the account of the Enveloper reached you?" (al-Ghāshiya 88/1). Also "fire covering their faces" (Ibrāhīm 14/50).
- تَغْشِيَة — the covering of a thing with a case.
The Qurʾān uses the same verb of the night in other places as well: "He covers the day with the night" (al-Aʿrāf 7/54; similarly at al-Raʿd 13/3). In the Qurʾān, that is, the night is not an "absence" but something that actively comes and settles over. It is described not as the withdrawal of light but as the coming of darkness.
In the sūra's first three oaths the verbs are in the perfect (māḍī): talāhā (it followed), jallāhā (it displayed). In the fourth the verb turns to the imperfect (muḍāriʿ): yaghshāhā (it covers).
This may not be accidental. In Arabic the perfect conveys completedness, the imperfect continuity and renewal. The day's displaying is a finished work; the night's covering is a work that goes on, that happens again each time.
The same distinction is preserved in Sūrat al-Layl as well — and its holding in both sūras at once suggests that the choice is deliberate:
| Night | Day | |
|---|---|---|
| Al-Shams 91/3-4 | yaghshāhā — imperfect | jallāhā — perfect |
| Al-Layl 92/1-2 | yaghshā — imperfect | tajallā — perfect |
To be honest, this has to be added: the distinction is not a rule valid everywhere in the Qurʾān. In Sūrat al-Ḍuḥā the night comes in the perfect ("wa'l-layli idhā sajā", al-Ḍuḥā 93/2); so it does in al-Takwīr ("wa'l-layli idhā ʿasʿasa", al-Takwīr 81/17). No general rule can be laid down, that is. But that al-Shams and al-Layl are consistent within themselves and with one another is a fact worth recording.
I can offer a reading as to its meaning — stating that it is my own reading: being covered is a more "continuing" thing than being brought into the open. Lighting is a moment, covering is a process. Ten verses on, the sūra will speak of the burying of the soul; and burying too is not an instantaneous work but a continual suppression.
The second pair is the earthly counterpart of the first. And the second pair gives in advance the language of the sūra's real matter: bringing into the open and covering over. Ten verses on, this duality will be carried into man's interior — he who brings his soul out and he who covers his soul over. The day-night cycle of the cosmos is set up as the metaphor of moral choice.
The difference between them is this, and here lies the core of the sūra: in the sky these two states come in turn and of necessity; in man they come by choice. The sun does not choose its own rising, the night does not choose its own coming. Man chooses which of them he will be inside.