وَٱلَّيْلِ إِذَا يَغْشَىٰ
The same verb occurred in Sūrat al-Shams: "wa'l-layli idhā yaghshāhā" (91/4) — "when it covers it". There there was an object: هَا. Here there is none. Only يَغْشَىٰ — "when it covers".
This is a difference that is lost in translation but bears directly on the meaning. In Arabic, when the object of a transitive verb is dropped, the verb becomes general: the act is no longer done to a particular object but to everything.
In al-Shams the night was covering something (the sun, the earth, the darkness — the referent was disputed). In al-Layl the night covers, full stop. Covers what? Whatever there is.
| al-Shams 91/3-4 | al-Layl 92/1-2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Day | jallāhā — it displayed it (transitive, with an object) | tajallā — it itself came out (reflexive, without an object) |
| Night | yaghshāhā — it covered it (with an object) | yaghshā — it covered (without an object) |
Al-Shams points to an object — because the subject of al-Shams is a particular thing: the soul. Al-Layl does not point — because the subject of al-Layl is a distinction, not an object.
The distinction treated in the discussion of al-Shams is preserved here too: the night comes with the imperfect (yaghshā — it covers), the day with the perfect (tajallā — it came out). The same in both sūras. The imperfect conveys continuity and renewal, the perfect completedness.
I stated in the discussion of al-Shams that this is not a rule valid everywhere in the Qurʾān (at al-Ḍuḥā 93/2 and al-Takwīr 81/17 the night comes with the perfect). But its being consistent in these two sūras suggests that the choice is deliberate.
The root gh-sh-y — to cover, to overspread, to come over and envelop — was treated at al-Shams 91/4; its derivatives (ghishāwa, ghāshiya) were given there. There is one thing to be added here:
Besides the night's covering, the Qurʾān uses this root for the overspreading of fear and of the loss of consciousness: "as though a swoon of death had come over them" (al-Aḥzāb 33/19; similarly at Muḥammad 47/20). To cover, that is, is not only to close off the sight; it also means closing off perception.
This is related to the content of the sūra further on. The person who will be described in the eighth verse — the one who is miserly and does not see himself as in need — is not seeing something: his own situation. The night's covering can be read as the picture of that blindness. I record this as a possibility of interpretation, not as the certain intent of the verse.