Surah 113 - Daybreak

(Continuing a series in which an Anglican priest translates and comments on the Quran)


Say this: "I will look to the creator of the daybreak for my protection:
from the malevolence of creation,
from the malevolence of the darkness when it grows intense,
from the malevolence of women who make curses,
from the malevolence of the man who holds a grudge." 

Commentary

I've aimed for a more expansive translation than other English versions adding pronouns, for example, changing some word-order and tenses for emphasis and paraphrasing a fair bit.

Rab (creator/ruler) is cognate with common words throughout the middle-east, including the Hebrew honorific rabbi and the Babylonian majordomo rabshakeh.

The word I have translated as malevolence (sharr) is repeated four times (possibly) in pairs: the final two evils, at least, reflect a gendered pair: female and male evil-doers (thus inclusive of all humans who seek to wound).

'Women who make curses' is my paraphrase of 'the female blowers on knots', a reference to some form of evil magic (are knots about causing us to be tied-up, i.e. for life not to flow easily...?). There is some nice onomatopoeia: 'blowers' is an-nafathat. The word 'protection' in verse 1 can be used in terms of warding off the evil eye.

There is a fair bit of end-rhyme: falaq / khalaq (v. 1 day-break / v. 2 he created) - notably both words emphasizing God's role in starting something; and ghuqad / hasad (v. 4 knots / v. 5 he envies); indeed the final word of the middle verse waqb arguably acts as a shift in the rhyme sequence by moving the -q- to the medial position. 

Theologically, the surah replicates a problem concerning the origin of evil: v. 2 has 'the evil that [God] created', but in the cultural context of early monotheism (and without Augustine's more sophisticated discussion of evil as privation) this might mistakenly imply that God is the author of evil. Rather, I think the notion is that evil arises from a divine creation with free-will, and one prays to be delivered from this.

The surah is a prayer about how to deal with adversity from other people by seeking a more secure anchorage in the concept of a god who is the author of creation, in particular the one who breaks the night (the locus of evil) each day by bringing light. 'The Daybreak' is a fitting title. Christians will recognize the theme in 'Let there be light...' and in the Johannine Jesus referring to himself as 'the light of the world'. Of course, themes of darkness and evil abound in Christian (and other) writings.

In terms of human psychology here is an urge to re-frame the experience (or fear) of evil. Note that evil is not explicitly experienced but rather located in the (feared) intentions of others; the believer is to submit to trust in God rather than let his/her fears take over.