'Abdullāh Ibn 'Abbās / Muḥammad al-Fīrūzabādī
تفسير : (and will make him a messenger) after the age of thirty (unto the children of israel), and when he went to them he said: (lo! i come unto you with a sign) a token (from your lord) for my prophethood. they said: what is this sign? he replied: (lo! i fashion for you out of clay the likeness of a bird, and i breathe into it) like the breathing of a sleeping person (and it is a bird) flying in the air, (by allah's leave) by allah's command. then he fashioned for them a bat and when it became alive, they said: this is sorcery; do you have another sign? he said: yes, (i heal him who was born blind, and the leper) also, (and i raise the dead, by allah's leave) by allah's greatest name: o alive, the eternal. and when he did this, they said: this is sorcery, do you have any other sign? he said: yes, (and i announce unto you what you eat) in the morning and at night (and what you store up in your houses) what you save from your lunch to dinner and from your dinner to the next day's lunch. (lo! herein) in that which i have told you (verily is a portent) a sign (for you, if ye are believers) who have faith.
Jalāl al-Dīn al-Maḥallī
تفسير : and he will make him, to be a messenger to the children of israel, during his tender years, or after puberty. gabriel breathed into the opening of her garment and she became pregnant. what happened to her after this is mentioned later in sūrat maryam [q. 19:21ff]. thus, when god sent him to the children of israel, he said to them, ‘i am god’s messenger to you’, and, ‘i have come to you with a sign, an indication of my truthfulness, from your lord, and it is that, i will create (a variant reading for [the particle introducing the relative clause] annī, ‘that i’, has innī, ‘truly i’, indicating a new [independent] sentence) [that] i will fashion, for you out of clay like the shape of a bird (ka-hay’at, ‘something like the shape of’: the kāf is the subject of a passive participle) then i will breathe into it (fīhi, the [suffixed] pronoun [-hi] refers to the [preceding] kāf), and it will be a bird (tayran, is also read tā’iran) by the leave, the will, of god. so he created for them a bat, being the most perfectly-created of birds, and they would watch it flying, but when it went out of sight, it would fall dead — so that the work of a creature [sc. jesus] may be distinguished from the work of the creator, namely, god, exalted be he, and that he might know that perfection belongs to god [alone]. i will also heal the blind (akmah is one that is blind from birth) and the leper; these two are singled out for mention because with both afflictions the person is completely helpless. he [jesus] was sent in an age of [characterised by] medicinal science, and he cured, through supplication, fifty thousand in one day on the condition that each person would become a believer; and i bring to life the dead, by the leave of god — he repeats this to preclude any false attributions of divinity to him — he brought back to life his friend ‘Āzar, the son of an old woman, and the daughter of the tithe-collector, all of whom lived on and produced offspring, and [he also brought back to life] shem, son of noah, but he died [again] immediately. i will inform you too of what things you eat, and what you treasure up, store, in your houses, and what i have never seen, and he would inform people what they had eaten and what they would eat. surely in that, mentioned, is a sign for you, if you are believers.
