She said: "Woe betide me! Will I give birth when I am old and this my husband be aged? This is indeed surprising!"
72
Tafseer
'Abdullāh Ibn 'Abbās / Muḥammad al-Fīrūzabādī
تفسير : (she said: oh, woe is me! shall i bear a child when i am an old woman) a 98 year old woman, how can this be? (and this my husband) abraham (is an old man) 99 years of age? (lo! this is a strange thing!) this is astonishing!
Jalāl al-Dīn al-Maḥallī
تفسير : she said, ‘woe to me! (yā waylatā is an expression used in [reaction to] a serious matter; the alif [suffixed in waylatā] substitutes for the yā’ of the genitive annexation [waylatī, ‘my woe’]). shall i bear a child when i am an old woman, 99 years old, and this my husband is an old man?, 100 or 120 years old (shaykhan is in the accusative because it is a circumstantial qualifier, operated by the demonstrative import of dhā, ‘this’). truly this is a strange thing’, that a child should be born to such an aged couple.
