Ghafir (The Forgiver)

61. Allah, it is He Who has made the night for you that you may rest therein and the day for you to see. Truly, Allah is full of Bounty to mankind; yet, most of mankind give no thanks.

It is solely the Creator of the day and night and the Provider of our needs Who is worthy of being invoked. Since invoking God is secondary to knowing Him, the following Verse treats of the truths which raise the level of human understanding and meets one of the requirements of invocation which is setting one’s hope in its being answered.

The blessed Verse says:

“Allah, it is He Who has made the night for you that you may rest therein and the day for you to see,”

since the darkness of night leads to the obligatory stoppage of daily activities on the one side and darkness per se engenders serenity and resting of body and soul and light leads to motion and activity on the other.

The blessed Verse says:

“the day for you to see” so as to brighten the living environment and prepare it for all activities. It is worthy of note that mubsiran indicates “seeing” and thus depicting the day actually emphasizes making people see.

The blessed Verse further adds:

“Truly, Allah is full of Bounty to mankind; yet, most of mankind give no thanks.”

The precise order of the night and day and the consecution of light and darkness are instances of Divine Bounties and Favors bestowed upon servants considered among significant factors of the life of mankind and other living beings.

There will not be life and motion without light. Without temporary darkness, all creatures will be weakened and plant will wither. However, most of people take no account of such Divine Great Bounties and pass them unnoticed.

It is worthy of note that we normally expect a pronoun for the second

al-nas (“people, mankind”),

namely:

“Truly, Allah is full of Bounty to mankind; yet, most of them give no thanks,”

but the use of

“mankind”

instead of pronoun may indicate that uncultured mankind are ingratiate for Divine Blessings, as it is reflected elsewhere in the Qur’an¹ :

“and man is indeed an extreme wrong doer, a disbeliever.”2 However, if man happens to have seeing eyes and a wise heart to perceive “the showers of His Boundless Mercy have penetrated to every spot and the banquet of his unstinted liberality is spread out everywhere,” he will unconsciously express his gratitude and praise before God Almighty and will feel humble and inferior before Divine Mercy and Glory.