Mary (Maryam)
Verses 22-23 GROUP_719 19.22-23
22
فَحَمَلَتْهُ فَانتَبَذَتْ بِهِ مَكَانًا قَصِيًّا
So she conceived him and withdrew with him to a distant place.
23
فَأَجَاءهَا الْمَخَاضُ إِلَى جِذْعِ النَّخْلَةِ قَالَتْ يَا لَيْتَنِي مِتُّ قَبْلَ هَذَا وَكُنتُ نَسْيًا مَّنسِيًّا
The pains of labour drove her to the trunk of a date-palm. She said, ‘Oh, if only I had died before this and passed into oblivion!’
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Commentary
(a) Mary was an unmarried lady of a respectable and religious family. Being pregnant meant a calamitous trial for a lady like her; a trial of unparalleled severity. Ridden with anxiety, she quietly left the Haykal and went to far-off Bethlehem. When the time came and the labour pains began, she went out of town and sat under a date- palm tree. What a chaste, unmarried lady like her was going through at the time can be imagined from these words she uttered: ‘Alas! Why didn’t I die before this, so that my very existence would have been obliterated from people’s memories?’