Ya-Sin · Makki · ayah 37 of 83

Ya-Sin 36:37

وَءَايَةٌ لَّهُمُ ٱلَّيْلُ نَسْلَخُ مِنْهُ ٱلنَّهَارَ فَإِذَا هُم مُّظْلِمُونَ

“And a sign for them is the night. We remove[1269] from it the [light of] day, so they are [left] in darkness.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Every evening He draws the day off the night like a skin, and you find that darkness was underneath all along.

A reflection

No one has ever delayed a sunset

On a low hillside a search team has spent the afternoon looking for a missing walker. At half past four the team leader checks his watch and looks west. He has helicopters he can call, dogs, forty volunteers, radios. He cannot buy one extra minute of light. By five he is standing the team down for the night, and every one of them knows why.

That is the quiet force of the verb in this ayah. Naslakhu: We strip. The biggest daily event in every human life, the arrival of night, is given a subject, and the subject is not "it". It is "We".

The commentaries call the night and day together one of the great signs of His power. Each comes, and the other goes, without fail. One of them notes the force of the surprise word at the end, fa-idhā: and at once they are in darkness. There is nothing in their hands, he says. They have no choice but to enter it.

Think how much of our pride rests on control. We plan our diaries in fifteen-minute slots. We light our cities until they glow orange from space. We describe ourselves as people who make things happen. And yet the single most predictable thing in the day, the going of the light, has never once waited for us.

The ego is not humbled here by a catastrophe. It is humbled by the ordinary. The sun goes down at the time it goes down. Every engineer, ruler and billionaire on earth will be in darkness tonight at the minute He has set, with no appeal.

There is rest in admitting that. You were never in charge of the evening. You are only asked to meet it well.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.