49And He will make him, to be a Messenger (rasūl) 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 Allahu ta’ālā sent him to the Children of Israel, he said to them, 'I am Allah’s Messenger (rasūl) to you', and, 'I have come to you with a sign, an indication of my truthfulness, from your Rabb, 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 Allahu ta’ālā. 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, Allahu ta’ālā, exalted be He, and that he might know that perfection belongs to Allahu ta’ālā [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 Allahu ta’ālā - 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. |
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