Maryam · Makki · ayah 8 of 98

Maryam 19:8

قَالَ رَبِّ أَنَّىٰ يَكُونُ لِى غُلَـٰمٌ وَكَانَتِ ٱمْرَأَتِى عَاقِرًا وَقَدْ بَلَغْتُ مِنَ ٱلْكِبَرِ عِتِيًّا

“He said, "My Lord, how will I have a boy when my wife has been barren and I have reached extreme old age?"”

Saheeh International

Essence

Promised the son he had asked for, Zakariya asks how, describing himself as a branch dried out by the years.

A reflection

Not a wobble of faith, but a cry of wonder

Many readers hear this ayah as a small lapse. Zakariya asked for a son, was told he would have one, and then seemed to doubt it. A prophet, momentarily unsure.

The commentaries refuse that reading, and they give reasons. How could it be denial, one asks, from the very man who began by asking for this child? Another says plainly that he rejoiced intensely, and asked about the manner of what he had been promised.

The word how can mean from where, or in what way. One reading is that he was asking about the route. Would he and his wife be made young again? Would the child come from another wife? Or would it come to them exactly as they were? He had named every obstacle, so that the answer would make the way plain.

One classical commentator offers a second sense, from ordinary life. Picture a friend who has just given away something enormous. You say: how could you bring yourself to part with this? You are not doubting that he did it. You are marvelling at it.

A woman's elder brother rings to tell her he has paid off what remained of her mortgage. How, she says. You can't have. He laughs. She knows perfectly well he has. Her how is not a question about facts. It is what the heart says when a kindness is too large to take in at once.

A third commentator adds that the question was asked so that the answer would be given aloud, and believers' certainty would grow from it.

So the worn picture of a prophet faltering gives way to something warmer. An old man, overwhelmed, saying how in the voice of someone who already believes.

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.