Maryam · Makki · ayah 11 of 98

Maryam 19:11

فَخَرَجَ عَلَىٰ قَوْمِهِۦ مِنَ ٱلْمِحْرَابِ فَأَوْحَىٰٓ إِلَيْهِمْ أَن سَبِّحُوا۟ بُكْرَةً وَعَشِيًّا

“So he came out to his people from the prayer chamber and signaled to them to exalt [Allāh] in the morning and afternoon.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Unable to speak, holding the best news of his life, Zakariya came out to the waiting people and signalled one thing: glorify Him.

A reflection

His first message was not about himself

The usual way of remembering this scene treats it as the end of a trial. Zakariya has lost his voice, and he comes out of the sanctuary to show his people the sign.

Read what he actually does. He has just been told, after a lifetime of waiting, that he will have a son. He walks out to a crowd. He cannot speak, but he can gesture, and some commentaries say he wrote on the ground. And what he communicates is not I am going to be a father. It is: glorify Allah, morning and evening.

The commentaries are broadly agreed on the content. He signalled to them to pray, or to glorify their Lord, at the two ends of the day. One adds that it was in thanks to Allah for what He had given.

That is a striking order of priorities. The ego, given the best news of its life, wants to announce itself. Look what has happened to me. Zakariya, given a single means of communication, spends it entirely on pointing away from himself.

One commentator notes that his people understood anyway. They grasped that what he had been promised had come about, and the joy that reached him reached them. The news travelled. But it travelled inside an instruction to worship, not inside a celebration of Zakariya.

Most of us have a moment like this at some point: news too good to keep. The ayah does not ask us to hide it. It shows a man whose first instinct, with one gesture to spend, was to spend it on his Lord.

When your best news arrives, notice what you say first, and to whom it points.

The full entry has 5 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.