Ya-Sin · Makki · ayah 40 of 83

Ya-Sin 36:40

لَا ٱلشَّمْسُ يَنۢبَغِى لَهَآ أَن تُدْرِكَ ٱلْقَمَرَ وَلَا ٱلَّيْلُ سَابِقُ ٱلنَّهَارِ ۚ وَكُلٌّ فِى فَلَكٍ يَسْبَحُونَ

“It is not allowable [i.e., possible] for the sun to reach the moon, nor does the night overtake the day, but each, in an orbit, is swimming.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Sun, moon, night and day each turn in their own whorl like a spindle in the hand, and none may overtake another.

A reflection

The sun cannot do even this

Watch a champion racehorse in the starting stalls. Half a tonne of muscle, trembling, the fastest animal on the course. It cannot move a single step until the gates open. All that power is held, completely, by a mechanism it did not design and cannot override.

The ayah opens with something similar about the sun. Lā al-shamsu yanbaghī lahā an tudrika al-qamar: it is not for the sun to catch up with the moon.

One commentator explains the verb. Yanbaghī comes from a root meaning to seek, and its form means to yield, to be made easy. So the sense is: it is not made possible for the sun, it is not granted to it. Another reading takes it as: it is not fitting.

The same commentator then notices something about word order. The negation is placed directly on the sun, before the verb. He suggests this hints that the sun, left to itself, would be nothing at all. Whatever it has, it has only because His power holds it. It cannot dim the moon's light or take its hour. Someone else can, and that Someone is Allah.

That is a remarkable thing to say about the brightest object anyone has ever seen. The commentators knew it as the ruler of the day. The ayah tells you it cannot do one thing it is not permitted to do.

Turn that on the ego. We tend to equate power with freedom. The bigger the force, we assume, the more it can do as it likes. The sun is the largest force in the human sky, and it is entirely under command. If that is true of the sun, what exactly is your own power made of?

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.