Tafseer of Hud · Hud · 11:72
She said, "Woe to me! Shall I give birth while I am an old woman and this, my husband, is an old man? Indeed, this is an amazing thing!"
Important: The Arabic source text is always authoritative. This translation is a study aid and has not been verified by scholars — do not use it as a basis for religious proof or for deriving rulings (ahkam). When in doubt, always consult the Arabic text and a qualified scholar.
The explanation of the words of Allah the Exalted: قَالَتْ يَا وَيْلَتَا أَأَلِدُ وَأَنَا عَجُوزٌ وَهَذَا بَعْلِي شَيْخًا إِنَّ هَذَا لَشَيْءٌ عَجِيبٌ (72) (She said: Woe is me! Shall I bear a child while I am an old woman and this husband of mine is an old man? This is truly a wondrous thing.)
Abū Jaʿfar said: Allah the Exalted says here: Sāra said this, when she received the glad tidings that she would bear Isḥāq, out of astonishment at what had been said to her — for she had reached the age that customarily prevents men and women who reach it from bearing children.
It has been said: she was at that time forty-nine years old and Ibrāhīm a hundred years old. The narration concerning this on the authority of Mujāhid has already been mentioned earlier.
Ibn Isḥāq said the following concerning this:
18330. Ibn Ḥumayd has told us: Salama has told us, on the authority of Ibn Isḥāq: Sāra, on the day she received the glad tidings of Isḥāq — according to what has been transmitted to me by some of the scholars — was ninety years old, and Ibrāhīm a hundred and twenty years old.
يَا وَيْلَتَا — this is an expression the Arabs use upon astonishment at something and displeasure at something; one says upon astonishment: "waylu ummihi rajulan mā arjalahu!" (Woe to his mother — what a manly man he is!).
The linguists differed concerning the alif in: يَا وَيْلَتَا .
Some of the Basran grammarians said: this is a real alif; when you pause upon it, you say: "yā waylatāh" — it resembles the alif of the lament (alif al-nadba), but is refined relative to the pause; then the hāʾ was placed after it to make it clearer and more carrying in sound. This is because the alif, when it stands between two consonants, has a reverberation like the sound that echoes in the cavity of a thing, whereby it becomes greater and clearer.
Others said: this is the alif of the lament; when you pause upon it that is permissible, and when you pause upon the hāʾ that is also permissible. They said: do you not see that one has paused upon His word: وَيَدْعُ الإِنْسَانُ (Sūrat al-Isrāʾ: 11) — sometimes dropping the wāw and sometimes retaining it, and likewise: مَا كُنَّا نَبْغِ (Sūrat al-Kahf: 64) — sometimes with yāʾ and sometimes without?
Abū Jaʿfar said: The correct view in my judgment is that this alif is the alif of the lament, and that upon pausing, with or without the hāʾ, it is permissible in usage, because the Arabs employ this thus in their usage.
أَأَلِدُ وَأَنَا عَجُوزٌ — that is to say: how shall I have a child? وَهَذَا بَعْلِي شَيْخًا — the baʿl here means the husband; he is so called because he is the master of her affair, just as one calls the owner of a thing its "baʿl," and just as one calls the palm trees that can sustain themselves by rainwater without irrigation "al-baʿl," because the owner of a thing is its manager and caretaker, and the baʿl palm trees owe their life to the rainwater.
إِنَّ هَذَا لَشَيْءٌ عَجِيبٌ — that is to say: that someone like me and someone like my husband, at the age at which we are, should bring forth a child, is truly a wondrous thing.
