Maryam 19:1-6

"Kāf-hā-yā-ʿayn-ṣād. This is the remembrance of your Lord's mercy to His servant Zechariah. When he called upon his Lord with a hidden voice: 'My Lord! My bones have grown weak, my head has caught fire with old age; and in calling upon You I have never been wretched.'"

The note on the disconnected letters has been entered many times in the series (al-Baqara, Qāf, al-Aḥqāf): there is no certain knowledge. I do not repeat it here.

The attribute of the prayer must be recorded: khafiyy — hidden, lowered.

I record this as an observation: before the content of the prayer, the verse says what its voice was. And the measure of the voice was treated in Luqmān 31/19 (ighḍuḍ min ṣawtik) and in al-Ḥujurāt 49/2-3; here the same measure is applied to prayer.

This is one of the most concentrated visual expressions in the Qurʾān, and the lexicographers dwell on it.

The root ش-ع-ل — analysed here for the first time in the series: to catch fire, to burst into flame. Shuʿla — a flame.

The construction of the image is worth recording: the verse does not say "my hair has turned white". The head is given as something that catches fire, and shayban (old age, greying) comes as a specifier (tamyīz): "the head caught fire in respect of greying."

I give this as my own reading: the image carries two things at once — the spreading of the whiteness (like fire passing from hair to hair) and its irreversibility (what has burned does not come back). And the verb's making the head its subject shows that the process is not in the person's hands.

وَهَنَ ٱلْعَظْمُ مِنِّى — the root و-ه-ن was analysed in Luqmān 31/14 and in al-ʿAnkabūt 29/41 (the loosening of strength). I do not repeat it here.

And al-ʿaẓm (bone) comes in the singular — the lexicographers count it a generic noun: the whole of what is called bone.

وَلَمْ أَكُنۢ بِدُعَآئِكَ رَبِّ شَقِيًّا — "in calling upon You I have never been wretched."

I record this as an observation: the sentence rests the ground of the request on past experience. The request is thus framed not as the assertion of a right but as the continuation of a relationship already under way.