The Quran's Oaths: Why God Swears by Figs, Stars, and the Break of Dawn
The Quran opens many of its most powerful chapters with divine oaths. Why does God swear by created things, and what does Arabic grammar reveal?
When the Creator Takes an Oath
One of the most arresting features of the Quran is the frequency with which God swears oaths—not by Himself alone, but by figs and olives, by the morning light, by galloping horses, by the pen, by time itself. For readers encountering these passages for the first time, the experience can be startling. Why would the Creator of the universe swear by a fig? What rhetorical and linguistic purpose do these oaths serve, and what does the Arabic language reveal about their deeper architecture?
In Arabic, the Quranic oath is called qasam (قَسَم), and the study of these oaths—their grammar, rhetoric, and theology—constitutes one of the richest branches of Quranic sciences ('ulūm al-Qur'ān). Far from being decorative, the oath structure in Arabic is a sophisticated rhetorical device that simultaneously elevates the object sworn by, arrests the listener's attention, and frames what follows as a matter of supreme importance.
The Anatomy of a Quranic Oath in Arabic
In classical Arabic, an oath is constructed with one of three particles: wāw (وَ), bā' (بِ), or tā' (تَ). The Quran overwhelmingly uses the wāw of oath (wāw al-qasam), a single letter that carries enormous weight. When you read wa al-fajr (وَالْفَجْرِ) at the opening of Surah Al-Fajr (89:1), that tiny wāw is not the conjunction "and"—it is the oath particle "By." The shift is invisible in Arabic script but transformative in meaning.
Every oath in Arabic has two essential components: the muqsam bihi (the object sworn by) and the muqsam 'alayhi (the statement the oath is meant to affirm), also called jawāb al-qasam, the "answer" of the oath. Sometimes the answer is stated explicitly; sometimes it is withheld, left for the listener to feel rather than hear—a deliberate gap that Arabic rhetoricians call ḥadhf (ellipsis), and it is one of the Quran's most powerful tools.
Consider Surah Al-'Asr (103:1–3): Wa al-'aṣr. Inna al-insāna la-fī khusr. "By time. Indeed, humankind is in loss." Here, the structure is clean and complete. God swears by time (al-'aṣr), and the answer of the oath is the declaration about human loss. The brevity is devastating. The entire human condition is diagnosed in three short verses, and the oath by time itself gives the diagnosis its cosmic authority.
Why Does God Swear by Created Things?
This question has occupied Muslim scholars for centuries. The general principle, articulated by scholars like Ibn al-Qayyim and al-Zamakhsharī, is that God swears by whatever He wills of His creation, and His doing so ennobles and draws attention to that object. Humans, by contrast, are only permitted to swear by God Himself—a distinction that preserves the theology of tawḥīd (divine oneness) while allowing the Quran's rhetorical brilliance to flourish.
When God swears by the fig and the olive in Surah Al-Tīn (95:1), or by the sun and its morning brightness in Surah Al-Shams (91:1), He is doing several things simultaneously. First, He is inviting the listener to contemplate the object. The oath is a command to look, to notice, to reflect. Second, He is establishing the object as evidence—these created things testify to the truth of what follows. Third, He is performing what Arabic rhetoricians call ta'ẓīm: magnification. The oath elevates the object into a sign (āyah), transforming the mundane into the sacred.
The Extended Oath: When the Suspense Builds
Some of the Quran's most breathtaking passages involve chains of oaths—multiple objects sworn by in succession before the answer finally arrives. The effect in Arabic is a mounting rhetorical crescendo that has no precise parallel in English prose.
Surah Al-Shams (91:1–7) is the supreme example:
By the sun and its brightness. By the moon as it follows it. By the day as it displays it. By the night as it conceals it. By the sky and He who constructed it. By the earth and He who spread it. By the soul and He who proportioned it.
Seven oaths—each one a wāw particle followed by a cosmic or spiritual image—build toward the answer in verse 9: Qad aflaḥa man zakkāhā ("Successful indeed is the one who purifies it"). The grammatical term for this structure is i'tirāḍ muqsam bihi—the interposition of multiple sworn objects—and its rhetorical purpose is unmistakable: by the time the listener reaches the answer, they have been swept through the entirety of creation, from sun to soul, and the declaration about self-purification lands with the weight of the whole cosmos behind it.
The Arabic listener, hearing these verses recited, would feel the rhythmic parallelism of each oath clause, the phonetic echoes between words like jalāhā, talāhā, banāhā, ṭaḥāhā, sawwāhā—all ending in the same pronominal suffix -hā, creating a hypnotic incantation that builds expectation with each line. This is not merely poetry; it is linguistic engineering of the highest order.
The Silent Answer: When the Oath Goes Unanswered
Perhaps even more remarkable are the oaths whose answers are not explicitly stated. Surah Al-Fajr opens with a cascade of oaths—"By the dawn, by the ten nights, by the even and the odd, by the night as it passes" (89:1–4)—and then transitions into historical narratives about destroyed civilizations without a grammatically explicit jawāb al-qasam.
Scholars differ on where the answer lies. Some identify it in verse 14 (Inna rabbaka la-bi-l-mirṣād, "Indeed, your Lord is ever watchful"). Others argue the answer is deliberately omitted, a rhetorical strategy in Arabic called ḥadhf jawāb al-qasam. The purpose of this omission, as the rhetorician al-Sakkākī explains, is to allow the gravity of the oath itself to become the message. The listener is left suspended in the weight of what God has sworn by, and the silence after the oaths is itself a kind of answer—an invitation to sit with awe rather than rush toward resolution.
The Oath as a Bridge Between Grammar and the Sacred
What makes the Quranic oath so linguistically fascinating is that it operates simultaneously on multiple levels. Grammatically, it is a well-defined structure with specific particles, cases (the muqsam bihi takes the genitive case, majrūr), and syntactic rules. Rhetorically, it is a device for emphasis, magnification, and audience engagement. Theologically, it is an act of divine speech in which God points to His own creation as witness.
The i'rāb (grammatical inflection) of oath passages provides subtle cues that are entirely lost in translation. The genitive ending on al-fajri, al-'aṣri, or al-shamsi signals immediately to an Arabic ear that an oath is underway. This grammatical marker—a simple vowel shift—transforms the word from a noun into an invocation. It is one of the many ways in which Arabic grammar and Quranic meaning are inseparable.
Why This Matters for Modern Readers
For those reading the Quran in translation, the oaths can feel abrupt or puzzling. "By the fig" seems strange without the cultural and linguistic context that makes it resonate. But understanding the qasam structure reveals something profound: the Quran does not merely state truths—it performs them. It uses the full resources of the Arabic language to enact the gravity of its message in real time, in the very act of being heard.
The next time you encounter a Quranic oath, pause before rushing to the answer. Sit with the object sworn by. Ask why God chose it. Consider the grammar that makes it an oath rather than a statement. In that pause, you may find what the Quran's oaths have always offered: not just information, but encounter—a moment where language, creation, and the divine voice converge into something that demands not just understanding, but wonder.