His saying, exalted and majestic is He:

﴿And Zakariya when he called to his Lord, 'My Lord, do not leave me alone while You are the best of inheritors.'﴾ ﴿So We answered him, and We gave him Yahya, and We amended for him his wife. Indeed, they used to hasten to good deeds and call upon Us in hope and fear, and they were humbly submissive to Us.﴾

The matter of Zakariya, peace be upon him, has preceded in Surah Maryam. As for the amendment of the wife, it was said that He made her (p-198) conceive while she was barren, so she menstruated and became pregnant. This is what resembles the verse. It was said that a defect in her speech was removed.

Qadi Abu Muhammad, may Allah have mercy on him, said: This is weak, and the generality of the wording encompasses all aspects of amendment.

A group read: 'And they call upon Us,' and a group read: 'And they call Us.' A group read: 'In hope' with the opening of the ra and ghain, and 'And in fear' likewise. A group read with the ra in both being pronounced with a dammah and the ghain and ha being silent. A group read with the ra being opened and the ghain and ha being silent. The meaning is that they call upon Him at the time of their worship while in a state of hope and desire and fear, all at once; for hope and fear are intertwined. Some people said: Hope is when the palms are raised towards the sky, and fear is when their backs are raised.

Qadi Abu Muhammad, may Allah have mercy on him, said: To summarize this, the habit of every caller from among the people is to seek assistance with their hands. Hope – in terms of it being a request – is good along with it to widen the inner palm towards what is sought from it; for it is the place of giving, and by it one possesses. As for fear – in terms of it being a repulsion of harm – it is good along with it to cast that away and to gesture towards its departure and avoidance by shaking the hands and the like.

And 'humility' is the submission of the body that is compounded with the submission of the heart.