An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part 119: The Night is Dark, and Full of Terrors (The Daybreak (al-Falaq))
The Daybreak
(al-Falaq)
The Night is Dark, and Full of Terrors
Welcome to the next instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Qur’an version).
In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the Qur’an, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.
For more detail, see the introductory post https://bit.ly/2ApLDy0
For the online Qur’an that I use, see here http://al-quran.info and http://quran.com
The Daybreak (al-Falaq) 1-5
“Say, ‘I seek the protection of the Lord of the daybreak
from the evil of what He has created,
and from the evil of the dark night when it settles,
and from the evil of the witches who blow on knots,
and from the evil of the envious one when he envies.’”
I think that I’ve mentioned before that these final chapters remind me of the psalms, not least because many of them also seem to double as prayers or charms.
This one, for example, is a prayer of protection from things that haunt the night, with Allah cast as the Lord of Daybreak, a kind of “Lord of Light”, if you will. I’ve also mentioned in the Bible read-through that sometimes the night can be a thing of great beauty and nothing to be feared, but to a pre-industrial society then the nights can be much darker where thieves and bandits lurk, and nocturnal predators still potentially pose a threat. Thus it seems reasonable to ask for protection against the “evil of the dark night”.
Night-time is a time for evil magicians to work their magic, if you’re superstitious. I wonder what effect the witches blowing on knots are hoping to achieve? It’s not a curse tradition that I’ve come across before, but presumably the reader or listener of the Qur’an would know what this implies. Spoiler alert, though: magic doesn’t exist. Those witches could blow on knots until they passed out but it wouldn’t really do anything, I’m afraid. I like the image, though, and I like the repetition in the last three verses. The envy of an envious one is not necessarily a thing of night-time, but pitched in with the dark night and the curses of witches, it makes envy seem a dark and hidden thing, which I suppose it can be, a festering emotion nurtured in secret.
And to infer all that in just a few verses shows that this is a good piece of writing. One thing I skipped – the second verse. The “evil of what [God] has created”. Now, I think before that Qur’an has kind of tacitly acknowledged that bad things come from Allah as well, since it’s going for Allah being the total creator of everything with no damaged plans (even though on other occasions Iblis the devil makes an appearance). So therefore there can’t be things that Allah hasn’t created for a purpose, even if it seems, in this case, that the purpose is to scare humans in the night. Admittedly, the nocturnal part is implied from the following verse, it could be anything dangerous at any time, but the sense I get from it is a reference to nocturnal predators, maybe even things like nightmares or dying in the night as well. You have to then wonder why, if God created these things for a purpose that humans see as evil, why he would then change that purpose because people asked Him to.
The Night is Dark, and Full of Terrors
Welcome to the next instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Qur’an version).
In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the Qur’an, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.
For more detail, see the introductory post https://bit.ly/2ApLDy0
For the online Qur’an that I use, see here http://al-quran.info and http://quran.com
The Daybreak (al-Falaq) 1-5
“Say, ‘I seek the protection of the Lord of the daybreak
from the evil of what He has created,
and from the evil of the dark night when it settles,
and from the evil of the witches who blow on knots,
and from the evil of the envious one when he envies.’”
I think that I’ve mentioned before that these final chapters remind me of the psalms, not least because many of them also seem to double as prayers or charms.
This one, for example, is a prayer of protection from things that haunt the night, with Allah cast as the Lord of Daybreak, a kind of “Lord of Light”, if you will. I’ve also mentioned in the Bible read-through that sometimes the night can be a thing of great beauty and nothing to be feared, but to a pre-industrial society then the nights can be much darker where thieves and bandits lurk, and nocturnal predators still potentially pose a threat. Thus it seems reasonable to ask for protection against the “evil of the dark night”.
Night-time is a time for evil magicians to work their magic, if you’re superstitious. I wonder what effect the witches blowing on knots are hoping to achieve? It’s not a curse tradition that I’ve come across before, but presumably the reader or listener of the Qur’an would know what this implies. Spoiler alert, though: magic doesn’t exist. Those witches could blow on knots until they passed out but it wouldn’t really do anything, I’m afraid. I like the image, though, and I like the repetition in the last three verses. The envy of an envious one is not necessarily a thing of night-time, but pitched in with the dark night and the curses of witches, it makes envy seem a dark and hidden thing, which I suppose it can be, a festering emotion nurtured in secret.
And to infer all that in just a few verses shows that this is a good piece of writing. One thing I skipped – the second verse. The “evil of what [God] has created”. Now, I think before that Qur’an has kind of tacitly acknowledged that bad things come from Allah as well, since it’s going for Allah being the total creator of everything with no damaged plans (even though on other occasions Iblis the devil makes an appearance). So therefore there can’t be things that Allah hasn’t created for a purpose, even if it seems, in this case, that the purpose is to scare humans in the night. Admittedly, the nocturnal part is implied from the following verse, it could be anything dangerous at any time, but the sense I get from it is a reference to nocturnal predators, maybe even things like nightmares or dying in the night as well. You have to then wonder why, if God created these things for a purpose that humans see as evil, why he would then change that purpose because people asked Him to.
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