Maryam 19:22-26

"She conceived him and withdrew with him to a far place. The pangs of birth drove her to the trunk of a date palm. 'Would that I had died before this and been altogether forgotten!' she said. He called to her from below her: 'Do not grieve! Your Lord has made a rivulet beneath you. Shake the trunk of the palm towards you, and fresh dates will fall upon you.'"

The verse transmits Mary's words as they are: yā laytanī mittu qabla hādhā. And nasyan mansiyyā — "a forgotten thing, forgotten".

I record this as an observation: the text gives the words of a chosen servant at her hardest moment without softening them. The same honesty was seen in al-Qaṣaṣ 28/15-16, in Moses's assessment of himself; I rely on that treatment.

The command itself is worth recording: a woman in the pangs of birth is told to shake the tree.

The root ه-ز-ز — occurring here for the first time in the series: to shake, to shake down. (In al-Zumar 39/21 and al-Ḥajj 22/5 it is used of the earth in the form ihtazzat.)

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the verb itself: the help is not given ready-made. The water has been made to flow beneath her, the dates are ready on the tree — but the act of shaking is asked of her. And shaking the trunk of a date palm is hard even for a healthy person.

The scene thus shows that divine help does not remove the human act. The same structure was present in the command given to the mother in al-Qaṣaṣ 28/7 (the riskiest act was asked of her); I rely on that treatment.

فَكُلِى وَٱشْرَبِى وَقَرِّى عَيْنًا — three commands: eat, drink, and let your eye be cooled. The idiom qarra ʿaynan was treated in al-Furqān 25/74 (the eye's coming to rest in one place and not straying). I rely on that treatment.

The link within the sūra must be recorded: to Zechariah, not being able to speak was given as a sign (10); Mary is commanded not to speak. The two accounts share the same element — and in both, someone else will speak in place of the one who falls silent.