وَلِلَّهِ غَيْبُ ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضِ وَمَآ أَمْرُ ٱلسَّاعَةِ إِلَّا كَلَمْحِ ٱلْبَصَرِ أَوْ هُوَ أَقْرَبُ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَىْءٍ قَدِيرٌ
Wa li'llāhi ghaybu'l-samāwāti wa'l-arḍ, wa mā amru'l-sāʿati illā ka-lamḥi'l-baṣari aw huwa aqrab, inna'llāha ʿalā kulli shayʾin qadīr
"To God belongs the unseen of the heavens and the earth. And the matter of the Hour is only as the blink of an eye, or nearer still. God has power over everything."
لَمْح — root ل-م-ح: to glance quickly, to cast an eye, to flash. Lamḥa — a glance; lamaḥa'l-barq — the lightning flashed.
And the construction can be taken in two ways; the lexicographers record both: the blinking of an eye, or the time a glance takes. Both explanations are transmitted; in point of meaning there is no difference: the shortest span there is.
And the word must be recorded: aqrab — "nearer", not "shorter". The comparison is therefore made not by span of time but by distance.
I give this as my own reading, its ground being the word itself: the sentence measures not the speed of the Hour but its distance. And this closes a ring with the sūra's first verse: atā amru'llāh — it has come. The seventy-seventh verse says the same nearness in another word.
The root ق-ر-ب and the form iqtaraba were treated at al-Qamar, 54/1, and at al-Anbiyāʾ, 21/1; I rely on those treatments.
The root أ-م-ر occurs several times in the sūra and in several different tasks, and this is a structural sign:
| Verse | Expression | What |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Atā amru'llāh | The command that comes |
| 2 | Bi'l-rūḥi min amrih | The command that descends |
| 12 | Musakhkharātun bi-amrih | The command that holds the order |
| 33 | Aw yaʾtiya amru rabbik | The command that is awaited |
| 50 | Wa yafʿalūna mā yuʾmarūn | The command that is obeyed |
| 77 | Amru'l-sāʿa | The matter of the Hour |
| 90 | Inna'llāha yaʾmuru bi'l-ʿadl | The justice that is commanded |
All seven occurrences can be verified from the text. And I record this as my own reading: in the sūra the root is used on the cosmic plane (12), on the historical (1, 33, 77) and on the moral (50, 90). "Command" is thus the single word that binds three distinct layers of the sūra together.