“So eat and drink, and be comforted. And if you see any human being, say, ‘Indeed, I have vowed a fast to the Most Merciful, so I will not speak to anyone today.’” (26)

“And shake toward yourself”: that is, Mary was told, “Move the trunk of the palm tree.” The Arabs use both the direct construction and the construction with the preposition “with,” just as they say, “He cut off his head,” and use an equivalent construction literally involving “with his head”; likewise, “He lengthened the rope,” and an equivalent construction literally involving “with it.”

“It will drop upon you”: the well-known recitation has a fatḥah on the ta' and qaf, with the sin doubled; that is, “it will fall down repeatedly.” One of the two ta's has been assimilated into the sin. In other words, the palm tree will cause fresh dates to fall upon you. Hamzah recited the sin without doubling it and omitted the ta' that others assimilated.

Hafs recited it with a ḍammah on the ta', a kasrah on the qaf, and an ungeminated sin, according to the tafā'ul pattern. In this reading, it means “causes to fall,” and the feminine form is used because of the palm tree.

Ya‘qub recited it as “yassāqaṭ,” with a doubled sin and a ya', referring back to the trunk.

“Fresh, ripe dates”: that is, dates ready to be picked. It is also said that jany refers to that which has reached full maturity and whose time for harvesting has come. Al-Rabi‘ ibn Khuthaym said, “In my view, nothing is better for a woman who has just given birth than fresh dates, and nothing is better for the sick than honey.” (1)

His words, exalted is He, “So eat and drink”: that is, “Eat, O Mary, from the fresh dates, and drink from the water (2) of the river.” “And be comforted”: that is, be of good cheer. It is also said: Let your eyes be comforted by your son Jesus. One says, “May Allah cool your eye,” meaning: May your heart encounter what pleases you, so that your eye is content and no longer turns to anything else. It is also said that “May Allah cool his eye” means: May He cause it to sleep. One says that an eye is qarra when it becomes still. 7/A

It is also said that when the eye weeps from joy, its tears are cool, whereas when it weeps from sorrow, its tears are hot. From this comes the expressions, “May Allah cool his eye,” and “May Allah heat his eye.”

“And if you see any human being”: that is, “if you see.” The emphatic nun is added to it, and the ya' takes a kasrah because of the meeting of two consonants.

Its meaning is: If you see any human being who asks you about your child, then say, “Indeed, I have vowed a fast to the Most Merciful”—that is, silence. Ibn Mas‘ud likewise recited it as ṣamtan (silence).

In the linguistic sense, fasting is abstaining from food, drink (3), and speech (4).