Taking the soul in sleep and taking it in death:
The rūḥ (spirit) that directs the body and departs from it at death is the very spirit that was breathed into it, and it is the same nafs (soul) that leaves the body during sleep.
When the Prophet ﷺ once overslept the prayer he said, “Allah seized our souls when He willed and returned them when He willed.” Bilāl then said to him, “Messenger of Allah, the One who took my soul is the One who took yours.”
The Exalted says, “Allah takes the souls at the time of their death and those that do not die during their sleep; He withholds the ones upon whom He has decreed death and releases the others until an appointed term.”1
Ibn ʿAbbās and most of the commentators said, “He seizes them twice: the seizure of death and the seizure of sleep. During sleep He takes the one that is to die and releases the other until its appointed term, when its time of death arrives.”
It is established in the two Ṣaḥīḥs that the Prophet ﷺ used to say when he lay down to sleep, “In Your name, my Lord, I lay down my side, and by Your leave I raise it. If You take my soul, then forgive it and have mercy on it; and if You send it back, then protect it with the protection You grant to Your righteous servants.”
This is one of the two explanations of the verse: both the soul that is withheld and the one that is released have been taken in the sleep-type seizure. Whoever has completed his allotted term is kept with Him and not returned to his body, whereas the one