Qala rabbi ijAAal lee ayatan qala ayatuka alla tukallima alnnasa thalatha layalin sawiyyan
English
Ahmed Ali
He said: "O Lord, give me a token." "Though sound," He answered, "you will not talk to any one for three nights running."
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Tafseer
'Abdullāh Ibn 'Abbās / Muḥammad al-Fīrūzabādī
تفسير : (he said: my lord!) o my lord! (appoint for me some token) some sign when my wife becomes pregnant. (he said: thy token is that thou, with no bodily defect, shall not speak unto mankind) will not be able to speak to people (three nights) without suffering dumbness or any other illness.
Jalāl al-Dīn al-Maḥallī
تفسير : he said, ‘lord, appoint for me some sign’, namely, some indication of my wife’s becoming pregnant. said he, ‘your sign, for this, is that you shall not speak to people, that is, that you [should] refrain from speaking to them, but not [from speaking] the remembrance of god, exalted be he, for three nights, that is, together with the days thereof, as [stated] in [sūrat] Āl ‘imrān, ‘for three days’ [q. 3:41], while [you are] in sound health’ (sawiyyan, a circumstantial qualifier referring to the subject of the verb tukallima, ‘you shall [not] speak’) in other words, despite there being no defect [in you].
