Al-Furqaan (The Criterion)

Verse 61

Table of Contents

    61. “Blessed is He Who has set in heaven constellations, and has set therein a lamp (the sun) and the moonilluminating.”

    The Qur’anic word /tabaraka/ is used only in past tense and it is repeated thee times in this Surah1 .

    As it was said before, it is derived from whether the word ‘Baraka’ (stable and constant), or from the word ‘Barakat’ (abundant goodness).

    This noble verse is in fact the answer of those who said what ‘the Beneficent’ is. Though they present this question mockingly, the Holy Qur’an answers them seriously.

    It says:

    “Blessed is He Who has set in the heaven constellations...” The Arabic word /burūj/ is the plural form of the word ‘Burj’ which originally means ‘appearance’, therefore, that part of the wall that is around a city or camp of an army and is taller and more remarkable is called ‘Burj’. Also when a woman shows her adornment, it will be said: “Tabarrajat il-Mar’ah’. This word is applied to tall palaces, too.

    Anyway, heavenly mansions refer to special constellations before which each season and each time of year the sun and the moon pass, for example, it is said that the sun is in Aries-, which means the sun is in front of the constellation of Aries,: Or the moon is in Scorpios, that is the moon is in front of the constellation of Scorpios. (A constellation is a collection of stars which seems to us a special form.)2

    Thus, the verse refers to the heavenly places of the sun and the moon and it says:

    “...and has set therein a lamp (the sun) and the moon illuminating.”

    As a matter of fact, this verse states how precise and fixed the Orbits of the sun and the moon are in heaven. (Of course, these changes are in fact resulted from the movement of the earth around the sun).

    It is a precise system that rules them for millions of year so that astronomers can forecast hundreds of year later. This system that rules over these great celestial bodies testifies to the existence of a Lord Who is the manager and administrator of the great universe.

    Do not they (disbelievers) know Him with such clear signs and with such exact places of the sun and the moon and then they say what the Beneficent is?

    Why is the sun called ‘Siraj’? And why is the adjective ‘Munir’ used for the moon? It is probably because the word ‘Siraj’ means light and the lamp from which light comes out and this is consistent with the nature of the sun that according to scientific researches the light of the sun belongs to itself.

    On the contrary, the light of the moon does not belong to itself and it comes from the sun, therefore, the adjective ‘Munir’ (giving light) is used for the moon, though its light is borrowed from somewhere else.3

    Footnotes

    1. in verses 1, 10, and 61 ↩

    2. Constellation (astronomy), any of 88 visible groupings of bright stars, named after religious or mythological characters, animals, or objects. The oldest known drawings of constellations are Sumerian, and constellations may have been developed as early as 4000 BC. The division of the zodiac into 12 equal signs was known around 450 BC by the Babylonians. The northern constellations known today are little different from those known to the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. At the end of the 16th century AD, the first European explorers of the South Seas mapped the southern sky. Many constellations were proposed until astronomers finally settled on a list of 88. The boundaries of constellations, however, remained a matter of discussion until 1930, when definitive boundaries were fixed by the International Astronomical Union. The possessive forms of the names of constellations, preceded by a Greek letter, are used to name about 1300 bright stars. The famous star Algol in the constellation Perseus, for example, is called Beta Persei. ↩

    3. Of course, we talked about this in detail in Surah Yūnus, No. 10, verses 5 and 6. ↩