The Quran

اللَّهُ يَتَوَفَّى الأَنفُسَ حينَ مَوتِها وَالَّتي لَم تَمُت في مَنامِها ۖ فَيُمسِكُ الَّتي قَضىٰ عَلَيهَا المَوتَ وَيُرسِلُ الأُخرىٰ إِلىٰ أَجَلٍ مُسَمًّى ۚ إِنَّ في ذٰلِكَ لَآياتٍ لِقَومٍ يَتَفَكَّرونَ

Muhammad Asad

It is God [alone that has this power - He] who causes all human beings to die at the time of their [bodily] death, and [causes to be as dead], during their sleep, those that have not yet died:¹ thus, He withholds [from life] those upon whom He has decreed death, and lets the others go free for a term set [by Him]. In [all] this, behold, there are messages indeed for people who think!

According to Razi, this passage connects allegorically with the preceding - the light of guidance being likened to life, and man's going astray, to death or, if it is not permanent, to death-like sleep followed by awakening. Beyond this, however, we have here a reminder - in tune with the subsequent passages - of God's almightiness, and especially of His exclusive power to create and to withdraw life. As to the operative verb yatawaffa; it primarily denotes "He takes [something] away in full"; and because death is characterized by a disappearance of all vital impulses (the "soul") from the once-living body - their being "taken away in full", as it were - this form of the verb has been used tropically, since time immemorial, in the sense of "causing to die", and (in its intransitive form) "dying" or (as a noun) "death": a usage invariably adhered to in the Qur'an. The traditional likening of sleep to death is due to the fact that in both cases the body appears to be devoid of consciousness, partially and temporarily in the former case, and completely and permanently in the latter. (The popular translation of anfus - p1. of nafs - as "souls" is certainly inappropriate in the above context, since, according to the fundamental teaching of the Qur'an, man's soul does not "die" at the time of his bodily death but, on the contrary, lives on indefinitely. Hence, the term anfus must be rendered here as "human beings".)