• This noble verse yields several points of benefit:
• First: it names the five prayer times explicitly; nowhere else in the Qur’an are they stated so plainly, though they appear implicitly in His words: “So glorify Allah when you enter the evening and when you rise in the morning” (al-Rūm 30:17).
• Second: everything commanded here is obligatory, for the command is tied to its specific times. These are the five prescribed prayers, which may in turn draw with them the attached regular sunnahs and the like.
• Third: the arrival of the time is a condition for the prayer’s validity and the cause that makes it due. The precise limits of these times must be taken from the Prophet ﷺ, just as we rely on him to determine the number of rakʿahs, prostrations, and postures.
• Fourth: Zuhr and ʿAsr may be combined when a legitimate excuse exists, and likewise Maghrib and ʿIshā’, because Allah has treated the period of each pair as a single time for the person with an excuse, while it remains two separate times for one who is not excused.
• Fifth: the superiority of the Fajr prayer, the merit of lengthening the Qur’anic recitation in it, and the fact that such recitation is a pillar of the prayer. When an act of worship is named after one of its components, that indicates that component’s excellence and essential status. Allah, for example, refers to the prayer by the terms recitation, bowing, prostration, and standing—each of them an essential pillar.
• His words, “And during a part of the night keep vigil with it” (Isrāʾ 17:79) mean: pray with it at its appointed portions of the night—“as an extra act of devotion for you,” namely, so that the night prayer will raise you to loftier stations and higher degrees, whereas for others it serves as an expiation for their sins.
It is also possible that the meaning is: the five daily prayers are obligatory upon you and upon the believers, while the night prayer is obligatory upon you alone, not upon them, as a mark of honour from Allah—He has placed upon you a heavier duty, favoured you with upholding it, so that your reward will be multiplied, your rank elevated, and you will attain