لَا ٱلشَّمْسُ يَنۢبَغِى لَهَآ أَن تُدْرِكَ ٱلْقَمَرَ وَلَا ٱلَّيْلُ سَابِقُ ٱلنَّهَارِ وَكُلٌّ فِى فَلَكٍ يَسْبَحُونَ
La'sh-shamsu yanbaghī lahā an tudrika'l-qamara wa la'l-laylu sābiqu'n-nahār, wa kullun fī falakin yasbaḥūn
"Neither may the sun overtake the moon, nor can the night outstrip the day. Each swims in an orbit."
The core sense of the root: to want, to seek, to go after. Baghā — he wanted, he sought. And the second branch of the root: to overstep the bound, insolence — baghy. The lexicographers make the connection thus: to want a thing too much leads to crossing the limit.
Form VII (inbighāʾ) turns the direction of the root: yanbaghī — to be fitting, to be seemly, to lie within the possible.
| Reading | What lā yanbaghī means | Upshot |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | It is not possible | A physical impossibility: the order does not permit it |
| 2 | It is not fitting, not seemly | An overstepping of position: each has its own work |
Both are transmitted; I do not impose a preference. And the common point can be verified: on either reading what is announced is a limit.
This verb occurs twice in the sūra, and both times it announces a limit. This is one of the most striking internal repetitions in Yāsīn:
| Verse | Expression | Whose limit |
|---|---|---|
| 40 | la'sh-shamsu yanbaghī lahā an tudrika'l-qamar | The heavenly bodies' — the limit of the order |
| 69 | wa mā yanbaghī lah | The Prophet's / the text's — the limit of the word |
Both occurrences can be verified. I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the sharing of the verb: the sūra uses the same verb once for the order of the sky and once for the kind to which the revelation belongs. In the fortieth verse the sun cannot enter the moon's field; in the sixty-ninth the Qurʾān does not enter the field of poetry. What is said in both sentences is the same: everything has a field of its own, and the fields do not mix.
The concrete sense: to catch up, to come up from behind and seize. Adraka — he caught up, he reached. And from here إِدْرَاك (idrāk) — to grasp: the mind's catching up with a thing. The lexicographers record this connection. The root has occurred in al-Qalam.
The picture in the sentence, then, is a chase — and the verse does not say that the chase comes to nothing; it says that there is no chase.
A point of word order, and it must be recorded: the first clause was built with a verb (yanbaghī lahā an tudrika), the second is built with a noun (sābiqu'n-nahār — an active participle in a construct).
| Clause | Structure | What it announces |
|---|---|---|
| Lā'sh-shamsu yanbaghī lahā an tudrika'l-qamar | Verbal sentence | That an event does not occur |
| Wa la'l-laylu sābiqu'n-nahār | Nominal sentence | That an attribute is absent |
In Arabic the nominal sentence announces continuity and fixity. The second clause, that is, does not say "the night does not outstrip the day"; it says "the night is not an outstripper of the day" — that is, it has no such attribute, and never has had.
| View | What is recounted |
|---|---|
| 1 | That the times do not mix — the sun belongs to the day, the moon to the night; neither enters the other's time |
| 2 | That the order is not broken — none of them leaves its own orbit and enters another's field |
| 3 | That the sequence does not change — night and day follow one another; neither gets in front of the other |
- فَلْكَة — the round weight at the head of a spindle; and the round of the knee.
- فَلَك — that which turns, that which is round; the circle a heavenly body follows.
- فُلْك — ship. The same root.
The lexicographers record that fulk and falak come from the same root and explain the connection by the picture of floating/turning on water. I transmit this relation as the lexicographers frame it, not as a definite etymological ruling.
And the link inside the sūra can be verified and is striking: in the fortieth verse falak, in the forty-first fulk. Two verses in a row, the same root, two different words — one in the sky, one at sea. I record this as an observation; I do not claim that the sūra sets up a deliberate play on words. What I record is that two derivatives of the root have been used one after the other.
And a caveat of method — per the method (Method): no modern model of orbits and no particular astronomical structure is drawn out of the word falak. The lexical sense of the word is "that which turns / that which is round", and that is the information the verse gives. Correlations beyond this are one point of view and are not the proof of the verse.
س-ب-ح — this root has been analysed in many places in the index: the core sense is to swim away in water or in space. I do not repeat it here.
There is a detail of word order that belongs here, and the lexicographers record it: the verb has come in the form yasbaḥūn — that is, the sound masculine plural, the plural form used in Arabic for rational beings. For non-rational plurals tasbaḥu would have been expected.
This usage is seen elsewhere in the Qurʾān too — for instance at Yūsuf 12/4, where the prostration of the stars is recounted, the form for rational beings is likewise used. The lexicographers record this as a style in which inanimate things are treated as rational.
And the choice of verb is worth recording: yasbaḥūn — "they swim." In the thirty-eighth verse tajrī (it runs) had been said of the sun. Both verbs belong to a liquid element. This section of the sūra recounts the sky in the language of water, and in the next verse it will pass to real water, to the ship. This transition can be verified.