The word 'surah'
The Arabic word 'surah' is often translated as 'chapter' in English; a more correct translation for surah would be 'a course of study'. The reason a surah is not a chapter is because a chapter (in a book, for example) generally covers only one topic; a surah covers more than one topic. A surah is an independent study, in and of itself, and is also connected to other surahs in the Quran. While chapters have a chronological or numerical order (for example, chapter 1 is followed by chapter 2 and so on), surahs have no such order. Generally, once a subject or topic has been covered in one chapter, it is not repeated again later on in the book in a different chapter; rather, the author often says something like 'please refer to section so and so or chapter so and so of the book'. In the Quran, however, many concepts are repeated many different times throughout various different surahs.
Additionally, the word 'surah' literally means the outer walls of a city; in ancient cities, when there were no borders or signs to indicate the start or end of a city, the outer walls were a means of security as well as an indication of the city boundary. Inside the city, there was a lot going on: there was the military, the government, the commoners, and so on, all doing their respective jobs – but they were all connected to form a unified community. Similarly, in a single surah, there are a lot of topics that are addressed but all of them are connected with each other and also with other surahs of the Quran.
Therefore, there is always a relationship between the beginning of the surah and the end of the surah. There is also always a connection between the beginning of one surah and the ending of the previous surah; in the Quran, there's a cohesion between the last thing that was said in the previous surah and the introduction to the next surah. It's important to explore how each of the surahs are connected with each other and not just focus on each individual theme in each part of the surah – we need to keep the big picture in mind because it can be easy to forget the inter-connectivity of the Quran.
