Maryam · Makki · ayah 23 of 98

Maryam 19:23

فَأَجَآءَهَا ٱلْمَخَاضُ إِلَىٰ جِذْعِ ٱلنَّخْلَةِ قَالَتْ يَـٰلَيْتَنِى مِتُّ قَبْلَ هَـٰذَا وَكُنتُ نَسْيًا مَّنسِيًّا

“And the pains of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm tree. She said, "Oh, I wish I had died before this and was in oblivion, forgotten."”

Saheeh International

Essence

Driven by labour to a dead palm trunk, the holiest of women asked to be forgotten, and Allah kept her cry and answered it.

A reflection

The holiest woman said: I wish I had died

Most of us carry a smooth picture of Maryam. She is serene, certain, untouched by fear. Statues and paintings have fixed her in that calm.

Then this ayah. Labour has driven her to a bare palm trunk. And she says: I wish I had died before this, and been a thing forgotten, utterly forgotten.

The Qur'an did not tidy this away. It sits inside the very passage that honours her. The surah that bears her name preserves the sentence she might have wished unheard.

Why did she say it? The commentaries are close to one voice. It was not chiefly the pain. One says it was shame before people and fear of scandal. Another says she feared being thought ill of. A third puts it starkly. She had been known as a devoted worshipper. Now, in their eyes, she would be suspected of the worst.

One commentator goes further. Whoever thinks she wished it because of the severity of the pain, he says, has thought ill of her. Another adds a gentler reason still. She did not want people to sin by speaking about her.

So the cry of the holiest woman is the cry of an innocent person facing a story she cannot control.

Think of a woman wrongly accused at work. The rumour has reached her mosque. In sujūd one night she whispers that she wishes she had never been born. Then she lies awake, afraid the words themselves were a sin.

This ayah meets her there. Allah let the best of women say it, and kept it in His Book. He did not answer her with rebuke. The very next ayah begins with the words: do not grieve.

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.