al-Inshirāḥ 94:8

Wa ilā Rabbika fa'rghab "And to your Lord alone turn."

Root: ر-غ-ب. The concrete sense recorded by the lexicographers is width: raghīb, that which is wide; raghuba'l-wādī, the valley widened.

From here the figurative sense emerges: to open oneself to something, to widen towards it, to turn to it with appetite.

And the word has an interesting property: when the particle changes, the sense turns around.

• رَغِبَ فِي / إِلَى — to want, to desire, to turn towards it.
• رَغِبَ عَنْ — to turn away, not to want, to withdraw from it.

The Qurʾān contains both usages:

• "Who turns away from the religion of Abraham (Ibrāhīm) but one who makes a fool of himself?" (al-Baqara 2/130). Here yarghabu ʿan.
• The word of Āzar to Abraham: "Are you turning away from my gods, O Abraham?" (Maryam 19/46). Again ʿan.
• And in the positive direction: "We are of those who turn to God" (al-Tawba 9/59). Here ilā'llāhi rāghibūn — exactly the same structure as al-Sharḥ 8: ilā + desire.
• "They used to call upon Us in hope and in fear" (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/90). Raghaban wa rahaban — the pair of hope and fear.

That is, the same verb reports turning towards or turning away according to its particle. A person's opening himself to something and closing himself off from it are, in the language, two directions of a single word.

Fa'rghab ilā Rabbika could have been said and the sense would have been complete. It was not said.

The prepositional phrase إِلَىٰ رَبِّكَ has been drawn before the verb. In Arabic an element brought forward from its normal position gains emphasis and ḥaṣr (restriction) — the same technique was treated in the last verse of Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ.

The sense becomes: to your Lord alone turn. It does not command turning in general; it makes the address of the turning single.

The seventh and eighth verses must be read together, because each balances the other.

• فَٱنصَبْ — horizontal. From task to task. When one ends, to the next.
• فَٱرْغَب — vertical. Upward. Turning.

What does the seventh verse give when read on its own? A command of unceasing work. And where that leads is a known thing: the work itself becoming the end, exhaustion, and finally falling apart.

The eighth verse closes that door. Unceasing occupation is commanded, but the place to which the occupation is directed is separately stated. Work is not left as a cycle that justifies itself.

And the order between the two is meaningful as well: first the work, then the turning. The turning does not take the place of the work; it determines the direction of the work.

An observation — as my own reading:

The sūra began with شرح: opening, widening. The sūra ends with رغب: a word that likewise has width at its root.

The first is the work God does for the servant (We opened your breast). The second is the work the servant does towards God (turn, open yourself).

That is, the sūra begins with an opening and closes with an opening; and the two openings are in opposite directions. In the first the addressee is the object, in the second the subject.

This is a reading resting on the overlap of the concrete senses of the two roots. The sense of "width" for the root ر-غ-ب is recorded in the dictionaries, but I claim no kinship between the two roots — the roots are separate, the link established is conceptual.