إِنَّ رَبَّكَ يَعْلَمُ أَنَّكَ تَقُومُ أَدْنَىٰ مِن ثُلُثَيِ اللَّيْلِ وَنِصْفَهُ وَثُلُثَهُ وَطَائِفَةٌ مِّنَ الَّذِينَ مَعَكَ ۚ وَاللَّهُ يُقَدِّرُ اللَّيْلَ وَالنَّهَارَ ۚ عَلِمَ أَن لَّن تُحْصُوهُ فَتَابَ عَلَيْكُمْ ۖ فَاقْرَءُوا مَا تَيَسَّرَ مِنَ الْقُرْآنِ ۚ عَلِمَ أَن سَيَكُونُ مِنكُم مَّرْضَىٰ ۙ وَآخَرُونَ يَضْرِبُونَ فِي الْأَرْضِ يَبْتَغُونَ مِن فَضْلِ اللَّهِ ۙ وَآخَرُونَ يُقَاتِلُونَ فِي سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ ۖ فَاقْرَءُوا مَا تَيَسَّرَ مِنْهُ ۚ وَأَقِيمُوا الصَّلَاةَ وَآتُوا الزَّكَاةَ وَأَقْرِضُوا اللَّهَ قَرْضًا حَسَنًا ۚ وَمَا تُقَدِّمُوا لِأَنفُسِكُم مِّنْ خَيْرٍ تَجِدُوهُ عِندَ اللَّهِ هُوَ خَيْرًا وَأَعْظَمَ أَجْرًا ۚ وَاسْتَغْفِرُوا اللَّهَ ۖ إِنَّ اللَّهَ غَفُورٌ رَّحِيمٌ
Indeed your Lord knows that you stand vigil for nearly two thirds of the night—or [at times] a half or a third of it—along with a group of those who are with you. Allah measures the night and the day. He knows that you cannot calculate it [exactly], and so He was lenient toward you. So recite as much of the Quran as is feasible. He knows that some of you will be sick, while others will travel in the land seeking Allah’s bounty, and yet others will fight in the way of Allah. So recite as much of it as is feasible, and maintain the prayer and pay the zakat and lend Allah a good loan. Whatever good you send ahead for your souls you will find it with Allah [in a form] that is better and greater with respect to reward. And plead to Allah for forgiveness; indeed Allah is all-forgiving, all-merciful.
English translation: Ali Quli Qarai
The sūra's long final verse returns to where it began — the night standing — but to dissolve the rigour of the opening command. "Indeed your Lord knows that you stand nearly two‑thirds of the night, or a half of it, or a third, along with a group of those who are with you... He knew that you cannot keep count of it, so He has relented toward you. So recite as much of the Qurʾān as is feasible." Here the two Arabic sources are at their most valuable, because they record the human situation behind the relief. al‑Qummī (via Abū al‑Jārūd from al‑Bāqir) reports that the believers were tormented by the arithmetic of the vigil: "when are the two‑thirds? — a man would stand until morning, for fear that he had not kept proper count of it," and so God sent the verse down. al‑Burhān gives the same picture from the other side: "the Prophet did that, announced it to the people, and it bore hard upon them," and preserves the gloss that "He knew that you cannot keep count of it" means simply "you cannot bear it (lan tuṭīqūhu)."
Both sources state the legal upshot in the technical language of naskh: "this verse abrogated [the command] 'so recite as much of the Qurʾān as is feasible'" — that is, the determinate night‑vigil obligation of vv.1–4 is lifted in favour of whatever is feasible. An external cross‑check confirms this is the majority position: the obligatory night vigil, observed (by the dominant report) for some ten years, was attenuated by v.20 to a recommended (supererogatory) act for the Prophet and the community alike. Both sources also append the memorable maxim that "no prophet ever came but that he withdrew apart for the night prayer," al‑Burhān adding "and no prophet ever brought the night prayer at the beginning of the night" — preserving the vigil's dignity even as its obligation is eased.
The Enlightening Commentary reads the same movement morally and pastorally. It stresses that the verse couples the relief with a guard against spiritual pride: those who pray by night, recite, give to the poor and strive by day are still told to "seek God's forgiveness," for "Divine obligations are harmonious with human capacities and never entail hardship." It notes the telling pairing within the verse of "those who travel in the land seeking God's bounty" (commerce) with "those who fight in God's way" (jihād) — the worldly and the otherworldly set side by side — and the tradition that an honest merchant who shuns fraud is "like a warrior in the path of God." On the closing commands — establish prayer, give zakāt, lend God a goodly loan — the Arabic sources add a precise legal point from Samāʿa: the "goodly loan" is "other than the obligatory zakāt," i.e. a voluntary charity beyond the due. al‑Burhān finally preserves a distinctively Imāmī identification, transmitted through al‑Ṭabarsī from Ibn ʿAbbās, of "a group of those with you" who shared the Prophet's vigil: ʿAlī and Abū Dharr.
(al‑Ṭabarsī's Majmaʿ al‑Bayān as an independent text, al‑Ṭūsī's al‑Tibyān and al‑Ṭabāṭabāʾī's al‑Mīzān could not be retrieved for this surah and are recorded as silent; the Ṭabarsī report above is preserved as a quotation within al‑Burhān.)