Ar-Rahmaan (The Beneficent)

17. The Lord of the two easts and the Lord of the two wests.

18. Then which of the Blessings of your Lord will you both [jinn and men] deny?

The blessed Verse 17 treats of another Divine Blessing saying that God Almighty is the Lord of two easts and two wests. It is true that each and every day in a year's time, the sun rises from a point and sets in another, thus the number of easts and wests run to the number of the days in a year, but taking into account the maximum northern and southern axes of the sun, we notice that other easts and wests fall between the twain.

Such order is the origin of the emergence of the four seasons of the year engendering abundance and it actually emphasizes and completes the contents of the foregoing blessed Verses treating of the well measured calculation of the course of the sun and the moon and the existence of the balance in the creation of the heavens.

Generally speaking, the blessed Verse reflects the precise order of creation, motions of the sun and the moon and the Blessings thereby bestowed upon man.

Some Qur’anic exegetes maintain that the two easts and the two wests herein connote the rising and setting of the sun and the moon, but the first interpretation is seemingly more appropriate, particularly owing to the fact that a number of Islamic traditions make references to the same and instance of which is a tradition narrated from the Commander of the Faithful, Imam ‘Ali (as) as per the exegesis of the blessed Verse in question, he says that the easts of the beginning of winter and summer are discrete.

Do you not see that the sun approximates and distances. It is a reference to the rising of the sun in the heaven in summer and the setting of the sun in winter.¹

The foregoing remarks clarify the reason behind Oaths like:

"Therefore, I swear by the Lord of all the points of sunrise and sunset in the east and the west that certainly We are All-Mighty,"2 ).

The reason is that reference is made to all the easts and wests of the sun during a year, whereas the blessed Verse in question makes a reference to the solar ascending and descending arches.

Again, the following Verse thus addresses jinn and men asking them:

"Then which of the Blessings of your Lord will you both [jinn and men] deny?"