وَٱلشَّمْسُ تَجْرِى لِمُسْتَقَرٍّ لَّهَا ذَٰلِكَ تَقْدِيرُ ٱلْعَزِيزِ ٱلْعَلِيمِ
"And the sun runs on to a resting place appointed for it. That is the measure set by the Mighty, the Knowing."
This verse is one of the places in the Qurʾān where claims of scientific miracle have been produced most abundantly. Interpretations that draw this or that finding of modern astronomy out of the verse are widespread.
Per the method (Method) and plainly: this commentary does not take that road. The grounds:
1. The verse's own proof is not a piece of astronomical information. The second half of the sentence says so: dhālika taqdīru'l-ʿAzīzi'l-ʿAlīm — "this is a measure." The proof is not how the sun moves but that its movement is measured. 2. For the one addressed the sign is the order visible to the eye. The verse does not report a fact unknown to the one addressed; it names a fact he knows. In the thirty-third verse the dead earth, in the thirty-seventh the night — all of them were things seen. 3. The wording of the verse does not require any particular cosmological model, and because it does not require one it cannot count as the confirmation of any model.
Below I give the sense of the word and transmit the classical explanations. Modern correlations are one point of view; they are not the proof of the verse, and they are kept within that caveat.
The concrete sense: to flow. The flowing of water is expressed with this root. And the root's second use belongs to seafaring: الجَوَارِي (al-jawārī) — ships that run along. The Qurʾān uses this word of ships.
The choice of word is worth recording: the verse does not say "turns" or "walks", it says "runs". To run announces a movement that is unbroken and keeps on of itself — without a halt.
And two verses later the same field will come back: in the fortieth verse yasbaḥūn (they swim) will be said of the heavenly bodies, and in the forty-first fulk (ship) will come. Three times the sūra recounts the movement of the heavenly bodies in the language of water: it runs, it swims, and immediately after, the ship. This is a verifiable lexical field.
The root: to stay fixed in a place, to settle, to come to rest. Qarār — settledness; al-qarr — cold (air that stands still in a place). The root was treated in Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin) at 40/39 (dāru'l-qarār).
The pattern of the word here comes from Form X, and in Arabic this pattern can be three different things. This is a grammatical datum:
| Pattern | What it announces | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Noun of place | A place | The place where it will come to rest |
| Noun of time | A time | The time when it will come to rest |
| Mīmī verbal noun | The act itself | Coming to rest, settling |
| Explanation | What li-mustaqarrin lahā means | Ground |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | It runs until an appointed time | The lām here has the sense of ilā ("until"); the sun's running lasts for a term |
| 2 | It runs towards a position of its own | The noun-of-place reading; every body has an appointed place |
| 3 | It runs to the arrival point of each day | The daily rising and setting; the reading closest to the observation of the one addressed |
| 4 | It runs to the annual turning points | The shifting and turning of the sun's place of rising with the seasons |
| 5 | It runs for the sake of stability | The verbal-noun reading: the running secures the fixity of the order |
All five explanations are transmitted; I do not impose a preference. The common point can be verified, and it is what really needs to be recorded: on all five the running is not aimless. All of them announce a limit, a goal or an order. The second half of the verse already says this.
A reading in the form lā mustaqarra lahā is transmitted in the sources on the variant readings — "there is no resting place for it", that is, it runs without ever stopping.
This reading is not counted among the readings transmitted by mass transmission. I record it, because it reverses the meaning; but I issue no ruling upon it and do not go into the details of whom it is ascribed to.
The concrete sense of the root is to measure. Qadara'sh-shayʾa — he measured a thing, determined its quantity. Qadr — quantity, measure. Miqdār — a measuring instrument, or the quantity measured.
And a repetition within the sūra must be recorded: the next verse begins with the same root — wa'l-qamara qaddarnāhu manāzil (39). Two verses in a row with the same root, one a noun and one a verb. This is a verifiable repetition.
I record this as my own reading: read together, the two verses say the setting of the measure separately for the sun and for the moon, and with the same word. The proof is not the movement itself; it is that the movement is bound to a measure.
In the fifth verse the sūra had named the one who sends down as al-ʿAzīz al-Raḥīm; here the same attribute comes with another partner: al-ʿAzīz al-ʿAlīm.
| Verse | Pair | After what |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | al-ʿAzīz · al-Raḥīm | The sending down |
| 38 | al-ʿAzīz · al-ʿAlīm | The measure |
| 79 | — | bi-kulli khalqin ʿalīm |
| 81 | — | al-Khallāqu'l-ʿAlīm |
This should be read together with the table set up in Fuṣṣilat at 41/2: there the pair of Ghāfir 40/2 was al-ʿAzīz al-ʿAlīm — the same pair as Yāsīn 36/38.
My own reading: al-ʿAzīz occurs twice in the sūra, and in each its partner changes. The sending down is paired with mercy, the measure with knowledge. And al-ʿAlīm will return twice more towards the end of the sūra (79, 81) — both times in the discussion of creation. The distribution of the attribute is a verifiable datum.