By night while asleep / in the forenoon while playing
أَفَأَمِنَ أَهْلُ ٱلْقُرَىٰٓ أَن يَأْتِيَهُم بَأْسُنَا بَيَٰتًا وَهُمْ نَآئِمُونَ
a-fa-amina ahlu l-qurā an ya'tiyahum ba'sunā bayātan wa-hum nā'imūn — So did the people of the towns feel secure that Our might would come upon them by night while they were asleep?
Two consecutive, near-identical rhetorical questions pair a time of day with a matching human state: night with sleep, forenoon with play, so that the threatened arrival of "Our might" catches the towns' people in two opposite conditions of unguardedness.
Verses (7:97) and (7:98) are twins: the same question about the people of the towns feeling secure that "Our might" (ba'sunā) would come upon them, differing in the opening particle (a-fa- vs. a-wa-), the time-word, and the accompanying state. In (7:97) the might comes bayātan, an indefinite accusative of time, "by night", and the people are nā'imūn, an active participle, "asleep". In (7:98) the might comes ḍuḥan, likewise an indefinite accusative of time, "in the forenoon", and the people are yal'abūn, an imperfect verb, "playing". The two pairs are internally matched: sleep belongs to the night, play to the forenoon, so each verse imagines the seizure arriving at the moment when the people are most absorbed and least prepared. The grammatical shift from a participle (nā'imūn) to an imperfect verb (yal'abūn) also changes the framing: the first presents a state, the second an ongoing activity. The opening particle differs as well: (7:97) begins with a-fa-, while (7:98) begins with a-wa-, "or", linking the second scenario to the first as an alternative. Read with the surrounding verses, the pair follows (7:96), where the towns' people denied and were seized for what they had been earning, and precedes (7:99), which generalizes: none feels secure from Allah's strategizing except the people who are losers. The twin structure thus extends the seizure of (7:96) into two imagined moments of vulnerability.
Where it occurs
- 7:97 Poses the question of security against Our might arriving by night while the people are asleep.
- 7:98 Poses the same question with a-wa- for the alternative scenario: Our might arriving in the forenoon while the people are playing.
All Qur'anic expressions