وَلَهُۥ مَن فِى ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضِ وَمَنْ عِندَهُۥ لَا يَسْتَكْبِرُونَ عَنْ عِبَادَتِهِۦ وَلَا يَسْتَحْسِرُونَ · يُسَبِّحُونَ ٱلَّيْلَ وَٱلنَّهَارَ لَا يَفْتُرُونَ
Wa lahu man fi's-samāwāti wa'l-arḍ, wa man ʿindahu lā yastakbirūna ʿan ʿibādatihi wa lā yastaḥsirūn · Yusabbiḥūna'l-layla wa'n-nahāra lā yafturūn
"To Him belongs whoever is in the heavens and the earth. Those who are with Him are not too proud to serve Him, nor do they grow weary. · They glorify Him night and day, never pausing."
The verse removes separately the two obstacles that stand before service, and the two are of different kinds:
| Verb | Root | The kind of obstacle |
|---|---|---|
| lā yastakbirūn | ك-ب-ر | An obstacle of will — pride, unwillingness |
| lā yastaḥsirūn | ح-س-ر | An obstacle of strength — tiring and giving up |
Yastaḥsirūn — Form X (istifʿāl), root ح-س-ر. Ḥasara — to uncover, to strip; ḥāsir — bare-headed, without armour. And from this arises the sense "one whose strength is laid bare, spent": ḥasīr — exhausted.
The root was treated at al-Mulk on 67/4: yanqalib ilayka'l-baṣaru khāsiʾan wa huwa ḥasīr — "the sight returns to you exhausted." I rely on that treatment.
And the contrast between the two verses is worth recording: in al-Mulk the eye that looks grows weary; in al-Anbiyāʾ those who are with Him do not grow weary. The same root, two opposite rulings. I record this as an observation about the root.
لَا يَفْتُرُونَ — root ف-ت-ر: for the intensity of a work to slacken, to grow slack. Futūr — a pause, a slackening of pace. And the word differs from lā yastaḥsirūn: one is to be finished, the other to slow down.
يُسَبِّحُونَ ٱلَّيْلَ وَٱلنَّهَارَ — the root س-ب-ح was analysed in detail at al-Ṣāffāt on 37/143, and it was recorded there that the root's original sense is "to swim or glide, in water or in air, to flow along", while tasbīḥ is to hold apart, to declare transcendent. I rely on that treatment.
And there is a connection that must be recorded: the same root will be used thirteen verses later, in the thirty-third verse, of the heavenly bodies: kullun fī falakin yasbaḥūn. In the same sūra the same root, once in Form II (yusabbiḥūna), once in Form I (yasbaḥūna). This is a repetition of the root that can be verified within the sūra, and it will be taken up separately at the thirty-third verse.