Drawing Lots for the Guardianship of Mary (a.s.)

Some have considered “pens” in “when they were casting their pens” to be the pens with which they wrote the Torah, and these were the pens they cast into the water.(205) Others say they cast special arrows into the water, and whichever pen or arrow did not sink but remained floating on the water, its owner was considered the winner of the lot. The Qur’an does not explain the details of this drawing of lots, as it is a minor matter without any particular significance. In any case, by whatever criterion they used, the lot fell to Zechariah (a.s.).(206)