Tafseer of Mary · Maryam · 19:42
[Mention] when he said to his father, "O my father, why do you worship that which does not hear and does not see and will not benefit you at all?
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.
His saying إِذْ قَالَ لأَبِيهِ (when he said to his father): He says: Remember him when he said to his father: يَا أَبَتِ لِمَ تَعْبُدُ مَا لا يَسْمَعُ (O my father, why do you worship that which does not hear): He says: what business have you with the worship of an idol that does not hear, وَلا يُبْصِرُ nor sees anything, وَلا يُغْنِي عَنْكَ شَيْئًا and wards off from you nothing of the harm of any thing — it is merely a fashioned form that neither harms nor benefits. He says: what business have you with the worship of something that has these characteristics? Worship the One Who, when you call upon Him, hears your supplication, and Who, when you are beset, sees you and then comes to your aid, and Who, when you are stricken by an affliction, wards it off from you.
The Arabic philologists differed concerning the reason for the addition of the hāʾ in His saying يَا أَبَتِ (O my father). Some of the Baṣran grammarians said: when you pause upon it, you say: yā abah, and that hāʾ is an added letter, as in yā ummah; then one says yā umm when one continues. But because al-ab (the father) consists of only two letters, it was deemed deficient, so that the hāʾ remained attached to it and the yāʾ as it were followed after it; hence one said: yā abata aqbil, and the tāʾ was taken to be the marker of femininity. It is also possible to shorten the vocative form to yā ab aqbil, because in the form of address one may also, in the contracted form, address in meaning that which one ascribes to oneself, as the Arabs say: yā rabb ighfir lī, and one pauses in the Qurʾān upon yā abata just as it stands in the text.
Some of the Arabs pause upon the hāʾ by means of the tāʾ. Some of the Kūfan grammarians said: the hāʾ in abah and ummah is a pause-hāʾ that occurred so frequently in their usage that it came to be reckoned as the hāʾ of the marker of femininity, and they even added the annexation construction to it. Whoever pursues the annexation construction always writes it with tāʾ, for one expects a yāʾ after it, and the hāʾ then inevitably becomes a tāʾ, as one says: yā abati, and not otherwise. Whoever says yā abah is the one who pauses upon the hāʾ, for he expects no yāʾ after it. Whoever says yā abatā pauses upon it with tāʾ, and pausing with hāʾ is also possible: the use of the tāʾ is then for the sake of the alif al-nudbah (the alif of lamentation), through which the hāʾ becomes a tāʾ, while pausing with hāʾ is far-fetched, except in the case of the one who said: "yā umaymata nāṣibi" — by which he regarded that fatḥah as the fatḥah of the shortened vocative form, as though this were the end of the name. He said: and this is far-fetched.
