Maryam 19:7-11

"'O Zechariah! We give you good news of a boy whose name is John; before him We have made no one his namesake.' He said: 'My Lord! How shall I have a boy, when my wife is barren and I have reached the utmost limit of old age?'"

عِتِيًّا — root ع-ت-و: to overstep the limit; and to dry out and harden. The root was treated in al-Furqān 25/21 (wa ʿataw ʿutuwwan kabīrā), and there the sense the lexicographers record — "a plant's drying out and stiffening" — was given. I rely on that treatment.

And the use here is worth recording: the same root is used in al-Furqān for insolence, here for the last point of old age. The shared picture: drying out and hardening. I give this as an observation.

"So it shall be; I created you before, when you were nothing."

The form of the answer must be recorded: the objection is not rejected — it is set beside an earlier case.

And the same sentence will return in the sixty-seventh verse of the sūra: a-wa-lā yadhkuru'l-insānu annā khalaqnāhu min qablu wa lam yaku shayʾā — this time against the one who denies the resurrection.

The same proof, one against good news and one against an objection. This is a repetition that can be verified within the sūra, and it shows how the sūra binds the accounts to the claims.

ءَايَتُكَ أَلَّا تُكَلِّمَ ٱلنَّاسَ ثَلَٰثَ لَيَالٍ سَوِيًّا (10) — the sign is not being able to speak.

I record this as an observation: in the third verse the prayer was said to be hidden; and what is given as a sign also has to do with the voice. And in the eleventh verse Zechariah conveys his message to his people by a gesture: fa-awḥā ilayhim an sabbiḥū bukratan wa ʿashiyyā.