فَإِذَا بَرِقَ ٱلْبَصَرُ · وَخَسَفَ ٱلْقَمَرُ · وَجُمِعَ ٱلشَّمْسُ وَٱلْقَمَرُ
Fa-idhā bariqa'l-baṣar · Wa khasafa'l-qamar · Wa jumiʿa'sh-shamsu wa'l-qamar "When the eye is dazzled, and the moon is swallowed, and sun and moon are brought together."
In the section on al-Inshiqāq the difference between idhā and in was treated: in is used for what is doubtful, idhā for what will certainly happen and whose time alone is unknown. And as was recorded there, the Qurʾān opens its scenes of the resurrection with idhā almost without exception.
The difference here is this: in al-Inshiqāq the answer to idhā was not given, the sentence was left hanging. In al-Qiyāma the answer comes openly — the tenth verse: "On that day man says…"
That is, the same structure, two different uses in two sūras. Al-Inshiqāq left a gap and drew the reader into it; al-Qiyāma leaves no gap, because in the sixth verse a question has been asked and that question has someone who asked it.
The فَ at the head shows this too: it ties back to the preceding verse. You ask "and when is it?" — then this is what will happen.
Root: ب-ر-ق. Its concrete sense is lightning, flashing, a sudden light. Barq — lightning; bāriqa — a thing that flashes; ibrīq (a shining vessel) is also related to this root.
The expression bariqa'l-baṣar describes the eye's being dazzled, frozen, made unable to blink before a sudden light or a terror. Think what the eye does when lightning strikes: for an instant sight is cut off, the eye stays open but can make nothing out.
Two variant readings are transmitted for the word, and both turn on the senses of dazzling and freezing; no great difference arises in the meaning that results. I do not say which reading belongs to which authority of the readings, because I am not sure.
"He only defers them to a day on which the eyes will stare fixedly (tashkhaṣu fīhi'l-abṣār)." (Ibrāhīm 14/42)
And the order of the scene is striking. The verse describes not the sky first but the eye. Descriptions of the resurrection generally come from outside inward — the sky splits, the earth quakes, then it turns to man. Here it is reversed: first the eye, then the moon, then the sun.
That is, the scene opens from the eye of the one who looks. What is told is not an event but an experience. I record this as my own reading; the ordering is the text's.
Root: خ-س-ف. And the concrete sense of this root is far harsher than what the English "eclipse" conveys: to collapse, to sink, to be buried in the ground, to cave in.
فَخَسَفْنَا بِهِۦ وَبِدَارِهِ ٱلْأَرْضَ — "So We made the earth swallow him and his house." (al-Qaṣaṣ 28/81)
Used of the heavenly bodies, khusūf is the moon's losing its light, going dark, sinking. But the concrete weight of the root is always the same: a thing's disappearing by collapse.
The choice of verb says something. The verse does not say "the moon's light went", nor "the moon was extinguished". The root's real sense is collapse: the moon is swallowed as the earth swallows a man.
A point of grammar. The verb is جُمِعَ — masculine singular, passive. Yet there are two subjects, and the first (al-shams) is feminine. What would be expected is jumiʿati'sh-shamsu wa'l-qamar.
The grammarians' explanation: when the verb comes before its subject it does not take the dual or plural marker, and it may also agree with the nearer subject, or stay singular when the two subjects are counted as one whole. Both are at work here: the two bodies are handled as the object of a single operation, as though a single whole.
The verb is also passive: jumiʿa — "they were brought together". Who brought them is not said. As was recorded in the section on al-Takwīr, the concealing of the agent in descriptions of the resurrection is a settled preference of the Qurʾān.
| View | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Union in light | Both lose their light; the difference between them disappears, the two become one |
| Union in position | The two are gathered in one place; the order that separates night from day is broken |
| Union in outcome | The two are brought together and driven to the same end |
All three are in the classical sources, and there is no indication requiring a preference among them. I state no preference.
But it is worth dwelling on what the three have in common: the difference between sun and moon is the difference by which time is measured. What separates night from day, month from year, what makes the calendar, is that these two move separately. When the two are brought together, no time is left to measure.
And this is the silent answer the sūra gives to the question in the sixth verse. The man asked "when?" The scene opens with the joining of the two instruments by which time is measured. The scale on which an answer to the question could be given disappears at the moment the question is answered.
I record this as my own reading; that the two bodies are a measure of time is the Qurʾān's own statement: "He made the sun a radiance and the moon a light, and determined its stages that you might know the number of the years and the reckoning" (Yūnus 10/5).