An-Naba · Makki · ayah 9 of 40

An-Naba 78:9

وَجَعَلْنَا نَوْمَكُمْ سُبَاتًا

“And made your sleep [a means for] rest”

Saheeh International

Essence

Every night your striving is cut off and you lie still as the dead; every morning you are given back.

A reflection

The manager asleep on the coach

The team coach pulls away from the stadium after a cup win. At the front sits the most famous football manager in the country. An hour ago he was barking orders at millionaires, and forty thousand people were chanting his name. Now his head has fallen against the window and his mouth is open. The phone in his lap has slid to the floor. He is, for the next two hours, as helpless as a baby.

Sleep does this to everyone, and it asks no one's permission. We made your sleep subāt, says the ayah. The sources describe it as a cutting off. Movement stops, work breaks off, and the day's going to and fro is severed so the body can rest. The strong man and the weak man lie down in the same way. The one who commands armies cannot command himself to stay awake beyond a certain hour.

That is humbling, if we let it be. Our pride is built on being in control: of our schedule, our image, our people. Sleep takes all of it away every single night, and returns it only as a gift. No one has ever earned their waking.

Against our nightly helplessness the Quran sets one line about Allah: 'Neither drowsiness overtakes Him nor sleep' (2:255). He is the only One who never needs to be cut off, and never loses hold of anything while we lie unconscious.

Some ask why the Quran keeps listing what Allah has made, as if He wanted admiration. But look at who benefits from this reminder. Allah loses nothing if we never notice our sleep. We lose the most regular lesson in humility we will ever be given. Every night the most important person in any room lies down and lets go, like everyone else.

Perhaps that is worth remembering the next time you feel indispensable. Tonight you will lie down, and the world will carry on without you, held by the One who does not sleep.

The full entry has 4 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.