Al-Nabaʾ 78:9

1. The Questions This Verse Raises

Sleep gives rest, but this verse also stands within an answer to the denial of resurrection. The first Question establishes what its description means; the second develops what the familiar experience teaches.

1. What does سُبَاتًا (subātan) tell us about sleep?

Sleep interrupts a life without ending it. Work stops, outward activity subsides, and the sleeper loses ordinary awareness of the world around him. Yet he remains alive. The verse asks us to consider what Allah has made that familiar condition do for us: «وَجَعَلْنَا نَوْمَكُمْ سُبَاتًا», “And made your sleep [a means for] rest.”^[1]

The question is what subāt adds to “sleep.” If the two words meant exactly the same thing here, the sentence would seem to say, “We made your sleep sleep.” Al-Rāzī reports this objection from unnamed opponents of revelation; al-Naysābūrī names Ibn al-Rāwandī. The answer begins by distinguishing a condition from its description: nawm names sleep, while subāt describes a quality of it (al-Naysābūrī).^[2] The principal lexical explanations concern rest, cutting off and extension (Ibn ʿĀdil, al-Darrah).^[3] Their consequences differ:

These are not five unrelated benefits. They are different accounts of the same interruption: its immediate effect, its duration, its degree and what waking after it helps us understand. We can therefore begin with the common experience of rest, test the narrower accounts, and then ask whether the comparison with death better explains the passage.

Rest: the meaning of the word or the result of the interruption?

Sleep stops work and outward activity while the spirit remains in the living body.^[4] The stillness may resemble death, but it is not the end of life.^[5] This pause relieves the sleeper from fatigue.^[6] Relief also makes renewed activity possible on waking:^[7] the faculties recover and the person enjoys fuller repose.^[8] Rest and renewal should nevertheless be distinguished. An explanation naming only stillness or cessation establishes the pause; it does not necessarily make the further claim about restored capacity.^[9]

Mental burdens can recede along with bodily work, a benefit developed in Question 2.^[10] The issue is how rest, cutting and extension relate. Does the word directly name rest, or does it name something through which rest comes?

If rest belongs to the root itself, no further step is needed. Ibn Fāris gives «راحةٍ وسكون», “rest and stillness.” Musāʿid al-Ṭayyār agrees with him. His contextual reason is that an enumeration of Allah's favours calls for the beneficial meaning: death, extension, cutting or merely repeating “sleep” do not explain it as well.^[11] Stillness is likewise the meaning al-Ṭabarī gives to both sabt and subāt, while al-Jawharī calls subāt sleep and traces it to rest.^[12]

On the cutting explanation, by contrast, the noun describes what sleep interrupts. Work, movement and dealings with other people cease; relief follows because their demands cease. Rest is then the result, not the immediate lexical meaning. This is the relationship between cessation and relief explained by al-Rāghib and al-Samīn. Ibn al-Aʿrābī emphasizes being cut off from people; Ibn ʿĀshūr adopts the cutting derivation.^[13]

There is a linguistic objection to making rest the direct meaning. Ibn al-Anbārī denies that sabata al-rajul means “the man rested” and explains subāt as «قَطْعًا لِأَعْمَالِكُمْ», “an interruption of your works.”^[14] The denied usage is, however, given by Ibn Manẓūr: «وسَبَتَ يَسْبُتُ سَبْتاً: اسْتَراحَ وسَكَنَ», “he rested and was still.” Ibn ʿAṭiyyah also states it, and al-Naysābūrī gives the sense “he stopped work and rested” in his explanation of prolonged sleep.^[15]

Even without that verb, the objection would not settle the noun's meaning. Rest in general and the particular rest obtained through sleep need not have identical names. A noun could describe the latter without its corresponding verb being used for every instance of resting. That is al-Murtaḍā's first answer; al-Khafājī similarly explains rest through sleep's interruption of sensation.^[16] We still have to establish the actual noun's use, but a denied general verb is not enough to rule it out.

Nor does “cutting off” by itself decide the interpretation. We must ask what is cut off. Three answers produce different accounts of the favour (al-Rāzī):^[17]

Al-Rāzī accepts all three as explanations of a benefit. The last, however, narrows subāt to light sleep. Being able to wake is beneficial, but that does not establish lightness as the particular quality named here. Al-Khafājī accordingly calls that interpretation «تَعَسُّف», strained; Ibn ʿĀshūr rejects it while accepting the cessation of bodily work.^[18] This distinction between a benefit of sleep and the word's specific meaning also governs the accounts based on its duration.

Does the word describe a particular kind of sleep?

A brief doze and a long, settled sleep do not give the same repose. The prolonged-sleep account makes that difference the point: subāt describes sleep quiet and extended enough to bring rest, rather than simply repeating the word “sleep.” Brief dozing and repeated interruptions may accompany agitation, while peace of mind permits settled sleep. Al-Murtaḍā develops this explanation as a quality of sleep; al-Qāsimī repeats it, and al-Khafājī considers it alongside the competing light-sleep interpretation.^[19]

Extension has also been proposed as the word's origin. A sleeper stretches out to rest; hair released from a braid similarly falls and extends. That is Ibn Qutayba's comparison. Al-Naysābūrī develops extension into prolonged sleep; al-Samarqandī takes rest as the meaning and extension as its origin. Al-Māturīdī and Abū Ḥafṣ al-Nasafī report this derivation without that reporting alone establishing their preference.^[20] The description masbūt, extended in physique, is another illustration of extension associated with repose (al-Qurṭubī, on 25:47).^[21]

The hair comparison depends on the actual use of the verb. Ibn Qutayba quotes poetry he attributes to Abū Wajzah al-Saʿdī:

وإن سبّتته مال جثلا كأنّه ... سدى وأثلاث من نواسج خثعما

The secure image is: “When she loosens it, it falls thickly, like the warp of cloth woven by the women of Khathʿam.” The exact words «وأثلاث» in this version are not securely explained. Al-Murtaḍā gives «واهلات»; manuscript-margin explanations quoted by Muḥammad Abū al-Faḍl Ibrāhīm explain the comparison as the warp of cloth hanging loose. Abū Ḥayyān has the materially different «حبلاً» and «واملات», and explains hair extending and curling like the warp in the hands of women weaving.^[22]

The verb sabbatathu describes the releasing or extending of the hair. But releasing a braid can also mean removing its ties, as Ibn al-Anbārī argued. Al-Murtaḍā therefore grants that the poetry need not establish extension as the root meaning. The same test applies to the alternative: proving that sabt means cutting does not by itself prove that subāt means cutting. Both explanations need evidence for the noun actually used in the verse.^[23]

Al-Naysābūrī's further poetic examples examine cutting to shape and extension through time. Their complete wording and qualifications appear below under Ṣarf: Lexical and poetic evidence for subāt. They distinguish possible linguistic connections; they do not remove the need to explain the quality of sleep intended here.

The narrower accounts describe three degrees: drowsiness as sleep begins, quiet as movement subsides, and the stilling of the senses (al-Māwardī, reporting al-Suddī and Qatādah and adding the third himself; Yaḥyā ibn Sallām in Ibn Abī Zamanīn’s abridgment; ʿIzz al-Dīn ibn ʿAbd al-Salām; al-Karmānī, reporting al-Mufaḍḍal; Ibn Fūrak).^[24]

The test is whether a particular degree can explain sleep as a whole. A swoon makes the difficulty especially clear. If it means ordinary sleep, the apparent repetition remains. If it means an unusually severe loss of awareness, it cannot describe every sleep, and illness is an unlikely explanation of a favour. These are al-Rāzī's reasons for rejecting that proposal.^[25] The lexical evidence below includes both light sleep and a death-like state. Such uses establish a range; context must determine which account best explains this verse.

Why compare a gift with death?

The broader comparison with death does not require a swoon, an illness or an actual death. The sleeper's outward activity and ordinary awareness cease, but his life does not. Abū ʿUbayda and al-Zajjāj retain the spirit in the body; al-Wāḥidī likewise distinguishes the death-like accounts attributed to Muqātil and al-Mubarrad from actual death. Later attribution of a death explanation to al-Zajjāj must be understood alongside his own distinction.^[26]

This also gives a separate answer to the repetition objection. The action noun, «المصدر», al-maṣdar, can emphasize that the condition remains sleep and is not actual death. Repeating the idea would then exclude a mistaken meaning. Al-Murtaḍā gives this answer separately from his account of prolonged, quiet sleep.

Yet the comparison still has to add something. If “death” means no more than the loss of outward sensation already implied by sleep, what has been explained? Al-Rāzī considers it weak on this ground and accepts cutting that brings rest; Ibn ʿĀshūr likewise judges Ibn al-Aʿrābī's cutting explanation the sound one.^[27]

The answer is that calling sleep death can make a comparison, rather than give it a second literal name. “Like death” is understood, with “like” left unsaid (al-Ālūsī). The resemblance lies in the interruption; its limit lies in waking. This is a kind of death that ends: the spirit’s light is cut off only from the outward body, «إذ لا ينقطع ضوء الروح الا عن ظاهر البدن», as Ismāʿīl Ḥaqqī al-Burūsawī explains.^[28] Abū al-Suʿūd, al-Ālūsī and al-Burūsawī prefer that comparison in a passage leading to resurrection; al-Ālūsī attributes the preference to the verifying scholars.^[29]

The Qurʾān itself distinguishes the two conditions:

﴿اللَّهُ يَتَوَفَّى الْأَنْفُسَ حِينَ مَوْتِهَا وَالَّتِي لَمْ تَمُتْ فِي مَنَامِهَا﴾

“Allāh takes the souls at the time of their death, and those that do not die [He takes] during their sleep.” (39:42)

Those asleep have not died: the rest of the verse distinguishes keeping the souls for which death has been decreed from releasing the others until their appointed term.^[30]

A temporary death-like interruption also remains compatible with rest. The halt renews the sleeper's powers, the connection made by Muḥammad ʿAbduh and Ḥijāzī. The phrase “lesser death” (al-Hararī) need not deny that the spirit remains (Ibn al-Aḥnaf). Farūq Zayn's “a temporary interruption of life” likewise concerns the senses and reason becoming inactive, not bodily life ending.^[31]

There is nevertheless a contextual objection: why mention death among the benefits of earth, rest, night and daylight? Actual death would not naturally be another present comfort. That is the force of al-Rāzī's objection; Niẓām al-Dīn al-Nīsābūrī similarly prefers relief from fatigue as the meaning appropriate to an enumeration of favours.^[32]

But the sequence also answers the challenge concerning resurrection and leads towards the Day of Decision. Waking after death-like sleep can therefore be a favour in two respects: it gives renewed life and activity, and it makes Allah's restoring power familiar to the hearer. Abū al-Suʿūd explains the connection through 6:60 and 39:42; al-Ālūsī agrees that the resurrection context favours it.^[33] The benefit and the proof need not exclude each other.

Does the following mention of day settle the interpretation? At 25:47, sleep is subāt and day is «نُشُورًا», nushūran. If nushūr means renewed life, the descriptions correspond: death-like sleep is followed by a rising to life. That is al-Zamakhsharī's reasoning, strengthened by the taking and reviving in 6:60 and 39:42, as al-Shinqīṭī explains.

There is also a coherent alternative. Nushūr can mean spreading out: people stop work to rest and then go out for their livelihoods. Al-Shinqīṭī supports that explanation with “day for livelihood” in 78:11 and the pairing of rest with seeking Allah's bounty in 28:73. Abū Ḥayyān answers directly that nushūr would rule out rest only if it necessarily meant life after death. He reports spreading and movement from Abū Muslim, and going out for livelihood from Ibn ʿAṭiyyah. Abū al-Suʿūd, by contrast, rejects livelihood as the intended sense here. Thus day can answer either rest with work or death-like sleep with renewed life; the reference to day alone does not decide between them.^[34]

The earlier attributions preserve both possibilities. Ibn al-Jawzī reports spreading out for livelihood from Ibn ʿAbbās and, through al-Māwardī, the spirit's restoration at waking as at resurrection.^[35] The stronger case for the death comparison consequently depends on the whole context. At 25:47, nushūr stands among signs of bringing into being, taking away and reviving dead land. Understood through resurrection, these signs jointly explain Allah's power and favour while preparing the hearer to acknowledge return after death. That is al-Ṭībī's further reason for the comparison.^[36]

Relief from fatigue remains a fitting favour, explaining the preference of al-Rāzī and al-Nīsābūrī.^[37] The temporary comparison with death also fits the favour once the lesson of waking is understood. Al-Zamakhsharī and al-Bayḍāwī give that comparison, and Abū al-Suʿūd and al-Ālūsī prefer it here; Ibn Juzayy instead adopts rest while reporting the lesser-death explanation and its evidence in 39:42. The choice therefore concerns the description's chief force, not whether sleep really gives rest. In a passage that answers those who deny the return, the likeness to death is the stronger chief force, and rest remains within it as the gift that waking brings (Abū al-Suʿūd, al-Ālūsī, al-Burūsawī).^[38]

What the study of sleep has found

The commentators describe sleep by what it does to the sleeper, and the modern study of sleep describes it in the same terms. Sleep scientists define it as a reversible state in which the sleeper's perception is disengaged from the world around and the sleeper does not respond to it.^[39] That is the cutting off named by سُبَاتًا "rest": the senses close and the day's movement stops. A century ago the same was written of the sleeper: in sleep, feeling weakens until it is almost lost (Rashīd Riḍā).^[40] What separates sleep from coma, in one definition the scientists give, is that it is quickly reversed.^[41] The likeness to death lies in the cutting off, and its limit in the return: the sleeper is cut off as one who has died, and returns within hours.

Research on the brain has found work done in sleep that fits the renewal the commentators named. A few hours of sleep rest the faculties, renew vigour and restore what the day used up (Muḥammad ʿAbduh, Ḥijāzī).^[42] Among the work of sleep is the removal of the waste that the body's labour leaves behind (Rashīd Riḍā).^[43] In 2013, researchers watching the brains of living mice found that in sleep the spaces between the brain's cells widen by about sixty per cent, so that the fluid washing them clears waste faster, and they proposed that sleep restores by removing the waste that builds up while the animal is awake (Xie and colleagues).^[44] In 2021 a study in people found that one night without sleep slowed the clearing of a tracer substance from most of the brain, and that the next night's sleep did not make up the loss (Eide and colleagues).^[45] Sleep also helps to fix in memory what has newly been learned (Diekelmann and Born).^[46]

It was written then too that sleep had been explained in many ways, but that scholars had not yet uncovered its secret or the true nature of its cause (Rashīd Riḍā).^[47] A century of research later, scientists still write that why human beings spend a third of their lives asleep remains an enigma, and that it is unclear why sleep is required (Eide and colleagues, Mignot).^[48] What has been found describes the gift the verse names: Allah made sleep a cutting off, and from it a person rises renewed.

Conclusion

The word likens sleep to a temporary death, severing the day's movement and toil until waking (al-Ālūsī, Abū al-Suʿūd, Ismāʿīl Ḥaqqī, al-Zamakhsharī).^[49] Al-Ālūsī notes that the verifying scholars prefer this meaning because it best fits the context, while Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Rāzī, and most commentators, as reported by al-Shinqīṭī, understand the word as a cessation that brings rest.^[50] Yet the very state likened to death is the gift itself, for this profound halt is what renews the body’s strength for the day ahead (Ḥijāzī, ʿAbduh).^[51] And Allah knows best.

2. How does sleep illuminate our dependence on Allah and the resurrection?

“Your sleep” names a sign within the people addressed. Its interruption and return raise two connected questions: what does waking show about resurrection, and what does the need for sleep show about our dependence on Allah? Ibn ʿĀshūr points to the hearers’ own experience as evidence close at hand.^[52]

A. Return after death

Taking by night, then waking by day

Question 1 distinguished sleep from actual death through 39:42.

Al-Anʿām places waking within the same daily sequence:

﴿وَهُوَ الَّذِي يَتَوَفَّاكُمْ بِاللَّيْلِ﴾

“And it is He who takes your souls by night”;

﴿ثُمَّ يَبْعَثُكُمْ فِيهِ﴾

“Then He revives you therein [i.e., by day]”. (6:60)

Between those expressions, Allah mentions His knowledge of what people have done during the day. After them, He mentions the appointed term and the final return to Him. Daily life, its interruption, its renewal and its final end all fall within one governance. ^[53]

The return to awareness and activity is already a familiar sign of Allah’s power. A person who finds the future resurrection difficult to conceive is directed towards the interruption and restoration he repeatedly experiences. Ibn ʿĀshūr calls sleep the familiar human condition most closely resembling death followed by resurrection. ʿAṭiyyah Sālim explains subāt as «الِانْقِطَاعُ عَنِ الْحَرَكَةِ», cessation of movement. He records the view that it is death, «فَهُوَ مِيتَةٌ صُغْرَى», "a lesser death", and includes sleep under his fourth proof, the reviving of the dead in this world, «إحياء الموتى في الدنيا بالفعل».^[54]

The accounts of the slain Israelite and Ibrāhīm’s birds, explained in 78:1–5, Q3, concern restoration after actual death.

Other Qurʾānic accounts describe people restored after fleeing death (2:243) and a man raised after a hundred years (2:259). These too are instances of actual death followed by restoration. Al-ʿAdawī places sleep beside them in his proof from the restoration of life, citing 39:42.^[55]

Remembering the final return when waking

The comparison appears in the Prophet's ﷺ words on waking:

الْحَمْدُ لِلهِ الَّذِي أَحْيَانَا بَعْدَ مَا أَمَاتَنَا وَإِلَيْهِ النُّشُورُ

“Praise belongs to Allah, who gave us life after causing us to die; and to Him is the resurrection.”^[56]

The words join gratitude with «النُّشُور», al-nushūr, resurrection. The person who has awakened thanks Allah for the return to waking life and remembers the greater return still to come. The supplication therefore expresses both dimensions of the verse's teaching: a present favour received, and a future resurrection to acknowledge.

B. Dependence on Allah

Power and wealth do not remove the need

Dependence becomes especially clear when sleep overtakes someone accustomed to command. Power over other people does not give him unlimited power over himself.

A tyrant may subject other people to his plans, yet sleep subjects him to a need he cannot defeat by planning. The one who commands is himself under command. This is how al-Māturīdī makes sleep a sign of Allah's «سُلْطَان», sulṭān, authority, and of the creature's place under His «تَدْبِير», tadbīr, governance.^[57]

Even the way sleep overtakes a person invites reflection. Its onset can bear down like a heavy burden, but its departure brings lightness. An ordinary load leaves fatigue behind after it has been put down; sleep can leave the person relieved. Al-Māturīdī asks the reader to consider that reversal as a sign of Allah's governance.^[58]

Wealth reveals the same limit from another direction. Outward comforts can be bought, but their owner may still lie awake, while a labourer without them sleeps well. Nor can the person seeking sleep through medication simply command the desired rest to arrive. Muftī Muḥammad Shafīʿ uses these comparisons to distinguish possessing the conditions of comfort from receiving sleep itself. The point is not that poverty always produces better sleep or that treatment cannot help. It is that possessions do not place this necessary benefit entirely under human control.^[59]

The dependence concerns a benefit, not merely a weakness. Exhausting movement has to cease for the person to rest, the connection emphasized by al-Saʿdī. Rest then prepares for renewed activity, as Mawdūdī and al-Nāṣirī explain.^[60] We need the interruption because it gives something that continued exertion cannot.

Rest for body and soul

Rest concerns more than tired limbs. Frightening thoughts can weary a person even when the body is still; relief from them is therefore part of sleep's benefit. Ibn Kathīr describes rest for body and spirit together, and al-Rāzī includes relief from frightening thoughts under night's covering.^[61]

The need becomes especially clear when danger keeps a person alert. Sleep can provide a temporary truce from the effort of guarding oneself and answering every demand. Quṭb develops that thought through Badr and Uḥud, where drowsiness came as security from Allah.^[62]

At Badr:

﴿إِذْ يُغَشِّيكُمُ النُّعَاسَ أَمَنَةً مِنْهُ﴾

“[Remember] when He overwhelmed you with drowsiness [giving] security from Him”. (8:11)

At Uḥud:

﴿ثُمَّ أَنْزَلَ عَلَيْكُمْ مِنْ بَعْدِ الْغَمِّ أَمَنَةً نُعَاسًا يَغْشَى طَائِفَةً مِنْكُمْ﴾

“Then after distress, He sent down upon you security [in the form of] drowsiness, overcoming a faction of you”. (3:154)^[63]

The second verse says “a faction of you,” not everyone present. Quṭb draws attention to the reassurance experienced by those believers: drowsiness arrived when distress and fear had wearied them. The rest mattered because it changed their experience of that pressure, not because the battle or its responsibilities had ceased to exist.

The relief is thus more than inactivity: the person gains a respite from fear and vigilance. Yet the sleeper cannot observe and control that experience as he controls his waking actions. The very peace he needs arrives through a condition in which his own control recedes. Quṭb draws these observations together in his conclusion that sleep is a blessing only Allah can give.^[64]

Conclusion

Sleep teaches dependence through a benefit, and resurrection through a resemblance. The sleeper remains alive, while the return to waking life directs attention to Allah’s restoring power. And Allah knows best.

2. How the Commentators Explain This Verse

Rashīd Riḍā (d. 1354 AH)

Rest does not mean that every bodily function stops. In his explanation of night as a time of rest in al-Anʿām 6:96, Riḍā distinguishes the quiet of the body from the quiet of the mind. The body rests from work; thoughts become calmer. Sleep completes that relief by interrupting voluntary activity, while the principal organs become relatively less active rather than ceasing to function.

Riḍā’s “relative stillness,” «سُكُونًا نِسْبِيًّا», limits the cutting off in 78:9 to voluntary activity: bodily functions become less active rather than stopping. Question 1 relates his explanation to later research. He describes fewer heartbeats, slower breathing, reduced bodily secretions and lower arterial blood pressure, especially at the beginning of sleep. As sensation weakens, the nervous system, particularly the brain and spinal cord, rests. He connects the relief of other organs with that rest, the removal of bodily waste and the formation of replacement particles from the blood. Mental work, in his explanation, taxes the brain; muscular work taxes the organs involved. Greater activity means greater heat and consumption, and a correspondingly greater need for rest.

Yet he does not treat those explanations as having uncovered sleep's cause. He ends this discussion:

⁧وَقَدْ عُلِّلَ النَّوْمُ تَعْلِيلَاتٍ كَثِيرَةً، وَلَمَّا يَصِلِ الْعُلَمَاءُ إِلَى كَشْفِ سِرِّهِ وَاسْتِجْلَاءِ كُنْهِ سَبَبِهِ.⁩

“Many explanations of sleep have been offered, but scholars have not yet uncovered its secret or clarified the true nature of its cause.”^[1]

Ibn ʿUthaymīn (d. 1421 AH)

Making something exist is different from authorizing it in the Sharīʿah. Ibn ʿUthaymīn distinguishes ⁧جَعْل كَوْنِي⁩, jaʿl kawnī, making within creation, from ⁧جَعْل شَرْعِي⁩, jaʿl sharʿī, establishing something in the Sharīʿah. He gives al-Nabaʾ 78:9–11 as an example of the first: sleep has been made rest, night a covering and day a time for livelihood. These verses describe what Allah has arranged in created life.

His example of the second comes from al-Māʾidah 5:103:

﴿⁧مَا جَعَلَ ٱللَّهُ مِنۢ بَحِيرَةٍۢ وَلَا سَآئِبَةٍۢ وَلَا وَصِيلَةٍۢ وَلَا حَامٍۢ⁩﴾

“Allah has not appointed [such innovations as] baḥīrah or sā’ibah or waṣīlah or ḥām.”^[2]

These names describe special statuses assigned to animals under pagan customs. Those practices existed, yet ⁧مَا جَعَلَ⁩, mā jaʿala, denies that Allah instituted them. Ibn ʿUthaymīn explains the denial as concerning legislation, not existence. A practice can occur within creation without being authorized in the Sharīʿah.

The distinction also explains why occurrence and approval cannot be treated as the same thing. What Allah establishes in the Sharīʿah is beloved to Him, but people may obey or disobey it. What He makes occur in creation necessarily occurs; it includes things He loves and things He does not love. Thus the existence of a practice does not itself establish divine approval. The making of sleep in this verse is therefore a making within creation: it occurs necessarily, «واقع ولا بد», rather than being a command people may obey or disobey.^[3]

3. Iʿrāb: Grammatical Analysis

The construction identifies both what Allah has made and what He has made it to be. The word table follows Dār al-Ṣaḥābah’s analysis in standard terms, separating the attached elements so that their different functions are clear.^[1]

The whole verse contains one verbal clause. Its internal objects do not form additional clauses.^[2]

Where the grammar changes the meaning

What has been made, and what has it been made to be? The two objects answer those different questions. ⁧نَوْمَكُمْ⁩, nawmakum, “your sleep,” names the thing being described. ⁧سُبَاتًا⁩, subātan, gives the character Allah has made it possess. The verse is not naming sleep and rest as two unrelated gifts. It connects them: Allah has given this sleep the character that subāt names.

That is the force of explaining ⁧جَعَلَ⁩, jaʿala, through ⁧صَيَّرَ⁩, ṣayyara, making something a given condition. The English must therefore retain both sides of the relationship: “your sleep” and “[a means for] rest” (Makkī).^[3]

The following clauses make the relationship clearer. Night is made a covering, and day a time for livelihood: each statement names a thing and then its character or function. The two-object analysis therefore explains a repeated construction, not an isolated feature of verse 9 (al-Muntajab). Dār al-Ṣaḥābah follows that analysis here.^[4]

Could the verb instead mean “created”? If it did, sleep would be the one object created, while subātan would describe the condition of that sleep. An explanatory translation would then be “We created your sleep as a death-like interruption,” or, on the rest interpretation, “as restful.” The difference lies in what the verb does: creating a thing with a given condition, rather than assigning a condition to the thing named.

Al-Samīn calls the second-object explanation «الظاهر», “the apparent explanation.” Just before this he allows “create” in verse 6, with mihādan as a circumstantial description. Applying that earlier alternative to verse 9 is an inference from his qualified wording, not a second analysis he explicitly sets out here. His apparent, preferred construction remains the two-object one.^[5]

Why is it “your sleep,” rather than simply “you”? The people addressed are the object of “created” in verse 8. Here the object is their sleep. The pronoun ⁧كُمْ⁩, kum, attaches to ⁧نَوْمَ⁩, nawma, to identify whose sleep it is; it is not a separate object of the verb. Meanwhile ⁧نَا⁩, nā, remains the subject, “We.” The construction turns from the creation of the hearers to a condition Allah has placed in their lives.^[6]

Does this decide the meaning of subāt? No. The preferred grammar establishes that sleep is made subāt; the lexical and contextual evidence must explain what subāt means. Rest through cessation and the comparison with death can both be expressed through the two-object construction. They change the explanation of the second object, not the identity of the first. Only the implied one-object alternative changes the verb's function to “created,” with the following word describing the condition in which that sleep exists.^[7]

4. Ṣarf: Roots and Morphology

The verse has three root-bearing word occurrences. The joining وَ, wa, the speaking pronoun نَا, nā, and the addressee pronoun كُمْ, kum, have grammatical functions but are not additional roots. The table distinguishes each actual form from its attached elements.^[1]

The range of جَعَلَ (jaʿala), “made”

Here, “made your sleep subātan” connects sleep with the condition named by subāt through two objects, unlike the one-object “created you” before it (Ibn ʿĀshūr; Makkī); the wider uses of jaʿala are explained in 78:6–7, Ṣarf.^[2]

نَوْم (nawm), “sleep”: the noun retains its middle root letter

The verb is نامَ يَنَامُ نَوْماً, “slept, sleeps, sleeping,” as Ibn Manẓūr records. The root is ن و م, n-w-m. Although the middle of the past verb نَامَ, nāma, appears as a long ā, the noun نَوْم, nawm, retains the root's و, wāw. Its pattern is therefore faʿl, not a new root based on the alif in nāma.^[3]

The noun's basic sense is familiar human sleep. From the stillness and cessation of movement associated with sleep, the language extends it to inactivity elsewhere. Hence نامت السّوق: كسدت, “the market slept: it became inactive,” which al-Rāghib identifies as a comparison. Ibn Fāris connects the root with quiet and cessation, while al-Zamakhsharī includes death and inactivity among its extended uses.^[4] These examples explain how sleep-language can describe another condition; “your sleep” here still names sleep itself.

The same distinction helps with its resemblance to death. The taking of the soul without actual death and the comparison with a light death describe sleep from different perspectives (al-Rāghib, quoted by al-Samīn). Neither requires replacing the familiar condition named by nawm with a different one. Jabal likewise identifies its Qurʾānic use with ordinary sleep.^[5] The question of what that sleep signifies is developed in Questions 1 and 2.

سُبَات (subāt): its pattern and its meaning

The form is fuʿāl: the first root letter has u, and the second is followed by a long ā. Ibn ʿĀshūr calls it ism maṣdar with the sense of sabt, cutting. On that explanation the noun names the interruption, while rest is the benefit that follows. The ordinary verbal noun, maṣdar, here is sabt. An ism maṣdar names the same action through another noun form, here subāt. This distinguishes its lexical form from its second-object position in the sentence.^[6]

The pattern also occurs in words for ailments: السُّعَال, al-suʿāl, coughing; الزُّكَام, al-zukām, a cold; and الجُذَام, al-judhām, leprosy. Without the definite article, suʿāl, zukām and judhām display the same u followed by long ā. Al-Ṭībī gives these examples to explain al-Zamakhsharī's comparison of subāt with the form of ailment names, alongside his death-like interpretation of sleep. The resemblance is one of word shape; it does not make ordinary sleep an illness.^[7]

There is also a lexical use of subāt for a harmful excess of stillness. Healthy sleep resembles that condition in its stillness, but not in the harm, the distinction Ibn ʿAṭiyyah makes.^[8] Thus neither a shared pattern nor a shared aspect of meaning allows us to transfer every feature of an ailment to the favour named in this verse.

The grammatical form remains the same when the authorities explain subāt through rest, interruption or the resemblance to death. What changes is the lexical and contextual account. Question 1 weighs those explanations. The following lexical witnesses explain their linguistic basis without choosing the verse's meaning from its shape alone.

Lexical and poetic evidence for سُبَات (subāt)

The form fuʿāl does not by itself choose between rest, cutting and extension. The comparisons below examine the wider vocabulary behind those explanations. Their value depends on the particular word and usage each establishes, not merely on a shared root.

The wider vocabulary allows more than one of these associations. Sleep, stillness and faintness appear in Lisān al-ʿArab; a death-related use appears in Asās al-balāghah. Jabal tries to relate the uses through smoothness, stillness and loss of inward force.^[9] A dictionary can show why an explanation is possible. To choose the sense here, however, we still need the actual usage and the verse's context.

Cutting to shape: the sandal witness

Al-Naysābūrī gives two answers to the objection that the verse merely calls sleep sleep. His first is cutting activity. He compares subāt with the descriptive use of sabt for carefully cut, tapered sandals, quoting:

[فليت] قلوصي حليت من مجاشع ... إلى جعفر في داره وابن جعفر

إلى معشر لا يخصفون نعالهم ... ولا يلبسون السبت ما لم يخصر.

The first bayt wishes for a journey from Mujāshiʿ towards Jaʿfar and Ibn Jaʿfar, but its verb «حليت» is not securely established. The second bayt is clear: “To people who do not patch their sandals, nor wear the sabt sandals unless they are tapered.” The tapered sandals are his example of cutting to shape, not a description of sleep. Other versions change both the travel verb and the destination.^[10]

The sandals show how cutting can describe a quality rather than name another object. They illustrate al-Naysābūrī's first answer to the apparent repetition in the verse. They do not by themselves establish the meaning of the different noun subāt.

Extension through time: the two sons of subāt

Al-Naysābūrī's second answer is extension. He quotes Ibn Aḥmar's comparison of two separating groups to «ابني سبات», “the two sons of subāt”:

وكنا وهم كابني سبات تفرقا ... سوى ثم كانا منجداً وتهاميا

فألقى التهامي [منهما] بلطاته ... [وأحلط] هذا لا [أريم] مكانيا.

“We and they were like the two sons of subāt: they parted equally, then one went towards Najd and the other towards Tihāmah. The one in Tihāmah settled there; the other swore, ‘I shall not leave my place.’” Ibn Manẓūr explains the idiom about settling and records the alternative ending, “I shall not return behind me.” He quotes Ibn al-Aʿrābī allowing both swearing and remaining in place as senses of aḥlaṭa.^[11]

Ibn Manẓūr also records sabt and subāt as a span of time and “the two sons of subāt” as night and day. Ibn Barrī records two other accounts: two men, one seeing the other in a dream before waking in a different region; or two brothers travelling respectively towards sunrise and sunset. The expression is therefore not confined to one explanation. Labīd’s witness is:

وغَنِيتُ سَبْتاً قبلَ مَجْرَى داحِسٍ، ... لَوْ كَانَ، للنَّفْسِ اللَّجُوجِ، خُلودُ

“I lived for a span before the running of Dāḥis; if only the stubborn soul could live for ever.”

Here sabtan expresses the span of time.^[12]

Al-Naysābūrī explains the “two sons” as night and day and connects their continuing alternation with extension. From this he proposes prolonged, deep sleep and prefers that answer. The poem depicts separation, not a sleeping person: its role is to illustrate the linguistic use behind his explanation. His printing’s «تقويماً وعزاراً» is unclear. Al-Murtaḍā’s parallel reads «التهويم والنوم الغرار», brief dozing and interrupted sleep, which he says bring no rest. That parallel clarifies the contrast with prolonged sleep without silently changing al-Naysābūrī’s printed words.^[13]

An easy or swift pace: why the lexical explanation matters

A different poetic witness shows why the root's range needs care. Ibn Fāris quotes poetry that his muḥaqqiq ʿAbd al-Salām Hārūn, citing Lisān al-ʿArab, attributes to Ḥumayd ibn Thawr:

ومطوِيّة الأقرابِ أمّا نَهارُها ... فسَبْتٌ وأما ليلُها فذَمِيل

“A slender-flanked camel: by day her pace is easy; by night it is swift.” Ibn Fāris explains «سَبْت», sabt, here as an easy pace, and in his separate entry for «ذميل», dhamīl, describes a pace like a camel’s running. The contrast between easy and swift is drawn from those two entries. Ibn Manẓūr instead explains the daytime pace as swift. Al-Qurṭubī’s main discussion describes an easy pace; Aḥmad al-Bardūnī and Ibrāhīm Aṭfayyish’s note reverses the description of the two paces. Al-Samʿānī quotes different wording and explains it through interruption. The same witness thus enters different linguistic arguments.^[14]

The disagreement about the camel's pace prevents this poetry from settling the verse's meaning on its own. Its significance depends on which lexical explanation is being followed; it cannot simply be cited for 'rest' without that distinction.

Light sleep and a death-like state

The language nevertheless uses subāt for different degrees of sleep. Ibn Manẓūr describes the light sleep of an elderly or sick person and quotes «نومُه سُباتٌ، وليلُه هُباتٌ», “his sleep is light, and his night full of awakenings.” He also cites a more death-like description:

وتَرَكَتْ راعِيَها مَسْبوتا، ... قَدْ هَمَّ، لَمَّا نَامَ، أَنْ يَمُوتَا

“She left her herdsman asleep; when he slept, he all but died.”

The witness illustrates a state resembling death; it does not make every lexical use the intended meaning of this verse.^[15]

A related question concerns the name of Saturday. The explanations also connect «السَّبْت», Saturday, with rest or the interruption of work. Al-ʿAdawī connects rest with the Sabbath usage in 7:163.^[16] These differing etymologies illustrate the linguistic alternatives.

These uses explain why the lexical range cannot replace the contextual argument. Question 1 weighs the interpretations in the verse; the noun's pattern and its other uses do not decide that judgment by themselves.

5. Balāghah: Rhetorical Analysis

A sign within the people addressed

Where it is. وَجَعَلْنَا نَوْمَكُمْ سُبَاتًا, “And made your sleep [a means for] rest,” especially نَوْمَكُمْ, nawmakum, “your sleep.”

The plain way. Speaking of sleep in general would name a familiar condition. “Your sleep” directs the hearers towards an experience within their own lives.

What it does. The preceding verse describes the creation of the people; this verse turns to a condition they experience. Ibn ʿĀshūr explains the choice of جَعَلْنَا, jaʿalnā, “We made,” through that movement: sleep is a condition whose arrangement is being considered, whereas “created” in verse 8 concerns the people themselves. The possessive “your” then brings the evidence close. They are not being asked only to observe the world around them, but to consider their own recurring loss of awareness and return to waking life. Describing that experience as subāt also reminds them of its benefit. “Your” identifies the recipients of the reminder; it does not restrict subāt to human sleep. Ibn ʿĀshūr gives animals' sleep the same description.^[1]

The effect. The sign is at once personal and familiar. Its interruption of activity is something the hearers undergo; its benefit is something they receive. The grammatical relationship explained above becomes part of the appeal: consider what Allah has made your own sleep to be.

From the continuation of the species to the preservation of the body

Where it is. The movement from أَزْوَاجًا, azwājan, “in pairs” (78:8), to نَوْمَكُمْ سُبَاتًا, “your sleep [a means for] rest” (78:9), then to night as لِبَاسًا, libāsan, “clothing” (78:10).

The plain way. A list could name pairs, sleep and night without explaining how the benefits belong together. Their order allows each to lead to the next.

What it does. Pairs enable the human species to continue. Sleep interrupts the sensation and movement that have tired the body, preserving it against exhaustion. Night then follows as the time especially suited to that rest. Al-Biqāʿī traces these successive relationships: the continuation of the species, the preservation of its members, and the provision of a suitable time for sleep. He also keeps the living sleeper distinct from actual death, quoting al-Zajjāj's description of movement ceasing while the spirit remains.^[2]

The effect. Each benefit prepares for the next. After the means by which human life continues, the passage names a need within that life and then its surrounding condition. The fuller explanation of night's covering belongs to verses 10–11; here its place after sleep completes the immediate progression.

How the clauses correspond (المُطَابَقَة, al-muṭābaqah)

Where it is. The relationship between سُبَاتًا, subātan, rest or the death-like interruption, and مَعَاشًا, maʿāshan, livelihood or waking life, together with the intervening description of night (78:9–11). The later clause is وَجَعَلْنَا النَّهَارَ مَعَاشًا, “And made the day for livelihood.”

The plain way. Sleep, night and day can be understood as three successive benefits. The commentators also examine how a word in one clause answers a meaning in another.

What it does. The relationship between the clauses depends on what subāt chiefly describes. Al-Ṭībī distinguishes two arrangements; the first follows the comparison with death, the second the interpretation through rest:^[3]

On the first explanation, maʿāsh can express life, and day names the time when waking ordinarily occurs. Death-like sleep is therefore answered by renewed life, the relationship developed by al-Zamakhsharī and given by al-Bayḍāwī alongside rest. The second arrangement needs a different connection: why should the creation of pairs lead to repose?

The connection is companionship and enjoyment between spouses during repose. The expressions al-Ṭībī cites make it concrete:

His two arrangements are conditional: one follows the death comparison; the other follows rest. They must not be combined into a single unconditional scheme.^[4]

The first arrangement raises a further question: must night be an interruption between sleep and waking life? “Day for livelihood” can answer two things at once. It contrasts with night, while also implying the waking activity that follows sleep. Al-Khafājī explains the two possibilities directly: activity answers the cessation of work; life answers the figurative death. He also relates night's covering to the sleeper's loss of ordinary sensory awareness and consequent need for protection. Al-Burūsawī likewise keeps night within the arrangement. The reply al-Ālūsī quotes from al-Kashf, a commentary on al-Kashshāf, therefore challenges al-Ṭībī's treatment of verse 10 as an intervening statement. It also explains the sequence through people's conditions together and apart: لما ذكر خلقهم أزواجا استوفى أحوالهم مقترنين ومفترقين, “Having mentioned their creation in pairs, He completed the account of their conditions, together and apart.” This is the reply's account of the sequence, distinct from al-Biqāʿī's progression from preserving the species to preserving the body. The alternatives concern how the clauses correspond; they do not change their grammatical objects or the English translation.^[5]

The two correspondences are cessation followed by activity, or death-like sleep followed by renewed life. Question 1 weighs the interpretations and their contextual arguments.^[6]

The effect. The sequence can teach gratitude for rest and livelihood while also directing attention towards resurrection. The correspondences explain how the clauses work together; they do not require turning the living sleeper into someone who has actually died. Ibn ʿĀshūr's explanation of subāt through cutting off work likewise anticipates the following description of day as a time of livelihood.^[7]

An indefinite description of the death-like interruption

Where it is. The indefinite ending of سُبَاتًا, subātan.

The plain way. On the interpretation comparing sleep with death, simply saying “death” could leave the difference between temporary sleep and permanent death unclear.

What it does. The indefinite description can identify a kind, نَوْع, nawʿ, rather than equate sleep with death without qualification. On al-Burūsawī's explanation, the تَنْوِين, tanwīn, marks a death-like state that ends. This makes the qualification part of the description itself: the outward interruption resembles death, but it is not permanent. His account of the living sleeper appears in Question 1. This explanation of the ending follows the death comparison; the interpretation through rest does not depend on it.^[8]

The effect. Within al-Burūsawī's interpretation, the description retains the difference that makes the comparison intelligible: sleep interrupts ordinary awareness, then ends in waking. It is that temporary resemblance which prepares the contrast with renewed life.

Balanced verse endings (السَّجْعُ الْمُرَصَّع, al-sajʿ al-muraṣṣaʿ)

Where it is. The neighbouring endings أَزْوَاجًا, “in pairs”; سُبَاتًا, “rest”; لِبَاسًا, “clothing”; and مَعَاشًا, “livelihood.”

The plain way. The benefits could be stated in sentences of differing lengths and endings. Here the repeated making clauses lead into short, corresponding descriptions.

What it does. Al-Zuḥaylī includes subātan among the balanced endings he calls sajʿ muraṣṣaʿ. The correspondence belongs to the sequence of expressions, rather than to an identical final consonant in every word. Each ending still names its particular benefit. The meaning of subāt is therefore explained through its language and context, not selected merely to match an ending.^[9]

The effect. The recurring shape makes the succession of benefits readily audible while the descriptions remain distinct. Sleep, night and day retain their own functions within the larger reminder.

6. Qirāʾāt

The ten qirāʾāt retain the wording of this verse. Their differences here concern how its sounds are joined or stopped upon, rather than another word or another interpretation of subāt.^[1]

Joining the plural-pronoun mīm (⁧مِيمُ الْجَمْع⁩, mīm al-jamʿ)

In ⁧وَصْل⁩, waṣl, connected recitation, the junction is ⁧نَوْمَكُمْ سُبَاتًا⁩, nawmakum subātan, “your sleep [a means for] rest.” The final mīm of “your” is followed by sīn, not by hamzah. ⁧صِلَة⁩, ṣilah, joins that mīm with an additional ū sound; ⁧سُكُون⁩, sukūn, leaves it without a vowel. The meaning “your sleep” remains the same.^[2]

The books differ over Qālūn. Of the books Ibn al-Jazarī names, only al-Hidāyah divides the two by path, sukūn through Abū Nashīṭ and ṣilah through al-Ḥulwānī. Al-Kāfī, al-ʿUnwān and al-Irshād give sukūn, which al-Tabṣirah prefers; al-Talkhīṣ and most of the Iraqi imams give both by either path, while al-Shāṭibiyyah leaves the choice open.^[3]

Al-Hudhalī’s isolated attribution through al-Hāshimī from Ibn Jammāz is no ṣilah at all. Ibn al-Jazarī himself excepts the case before ⁧هَمْزَةُ الْقَطْع⁩, hamzat al-qaṭʿ, the pronounced hamzah; later in al-Nashr he finds that exception stated by al-Shahrazūrī and Ibn Khayrūn. The absolute report and Ibn al-Jazarī’s qualification are distinct. The exception does not affect 78:9, where the following letter is sīn, and the isolated attribution is separate from the ordinary Abū Jaʿfar performance in the table.^[4]

Stopping on ⁧نَوْمَكُمْ⁩ (nawmakum), “your sleep”

At ⁧وَقْف⁩, waqf, stopping, the readers make this mīm still. They do not retain its connected ṣilah: at a stop the word ends in -kum, with no following ū sound. Ibn al-Jazarī also rejects Makkī's extension of the rules for the pronoun hāʾ to this mīm. That proposed analogy concerned ⁧رَوْم⁩, rawm, letting part of a vowel be heard, and ⁧إِشْمَام⁩, ishmām, indicating the vowel through rounding the lips. His reason is that hāʾ already has a vowel before ṣilah is added, whereas the plural-pronoun mīm is originally still: its connected vowel accompanies the added ṣilah. On stopping, that addition falls away. There is therefore no original vowel of the mīm to retain through rawm or indicate through ishmām.^[5]

Stopping on ⁧سُبَاتًا⁩ (subātan)

The word has indefinite naṣb, as explained in Iʿrāb. When stopping on this ending, an alif replaces the tanwīn: subātā, rather than the connected subātan. The stopping form does not remove the word's grammatical relationship to “your sleep” or change its interpretation.^[6]

Joining verse 9 to verse 10

The next junction is ⁧سُبَاتًا وَجَعَلْنَا⁩, subātan wa-jaʿalnā, “rest, and We made…”. Here the tanwīn meets wāw. It undergoes ⁧إِدْغَام⁩, idghām, assimilation into the following sound. The readers retain ⁧غُنَّة⁩, ghunnah, the nasal sound, except Khalaf transmitting from Ḥamzah, who assimilates without ghunnah. Khalaf appears in the reading traditions in two roles: as a transmitter from Ḥamzah and as an imam with his own independent reading. Here only his transmission from Ḥamzah omits the nasal sound.^[7]

These differences affect pronunciation, not the account of sleep as rest or its comparison with death. The wording and the arguments developed above remain unchanged.

7. What the Earlier Scriptures Say

The Qurʾān calls itself ⁧مُصَدِّقًا لِمَا بَيْنَ يَدَيْهِ⁩, "confirming what came before it" (3:3; 5:48), and this section exists for that reason.

What "confirming" means here. It does not mean the Qurʾān endorses the religion those communities now hold. It means it confirms the prophets who came before and what they brought (Ibn Taymiyyah).^[1] It does not confirm all of that either: the Qurʾān keeps part of what earlier revelation contained and sets part aside (Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[2]

Sleep as a gift amid human effort

Psalm 127:2 says in the King James Version:

“It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep.”^[3]

The verse places anxious early and late toil beside sleep received as a gift. Its preceding verse speaks of people building a house and a watchman guarding a city. Building and guarding remain real tasks, but their success is not made independent of the Lord by the effort involved. That context explains the contrast: labour and vigilance do not place everything a person needs under his own command.^[4]

Al-Nabaʾ directs attention to sleep through Allah's own act:

﴿⁧وَجَعَلْنَا نَوْمَكُمْ سُبَاتًا⁩ ٩﴾

“And made your sleep [a means for] rest” (78:9).^[5]

The shared subject is rest acknowledged as a gift, rather than something secured by striving. Psalm 127:2 speaks specifically of sleep given to “his beloved”; al-Nabaʾ addresses all its hearers, and Ibn ʿĀshūr extends the benefit of subāt to animals. Al-Nabaʾ also gives sleep its place in a larger argument: its interruption and the return on waking help the hearers consider resurrection. The signs lead towards the appointed Day of Decision. Gratitude for present rest and recognition of the future return belong together in the Qurʾānic explanation.^[6]