The Believer
In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.[40:64]
It is God Who has made for you the earth as a resting place, and the sky as a
canopy, and has given you shape- and made your shapes beautiful,- and has provided
for you Sustenance, of things pure and good;- such is God your Lord. So Glory to
God, the Lord of the Worlds!
* v.64 : The argument in the last two verses was from man’s personal experiences of his physical life. In this and the next verse a parallel argument is addressed to man on a much higher plane: ’look at the spacious earth and the canopy of the sky; look at the special position you occupy above other animals that you know, in shape and form, and moral and spiritual capacities; consider your refinements in food and fruits and the higher spiritual Sustenance of which your physical food is a type; would you not indeed say that the Lord is good, and would you not glorify His holy name?’
* A resting place: I understand this to imply a temporary place of rest or sojourn, a period of probation, to be followed by the eternal Home.
* Cf. vii. 1 1 and n. 996. The shape and form refer to the physical form as well as to the inborn moral and spiritual capacities of man. As regards physical form, Cf. Milton’s description of Adam and Eve, "Two of far noble shape, erect and tall" (Paradise Lost, iv. 288). As regards moral and spiritual capacities, they are typified by the breathing of Allah’s spirit into man: xv. 29.
* "Sustenance": all that is necessary for growth and development, physical, moral, and spiritual. Cf. n. 2105 to xvi. 73.