The Command to Remember Divine Blessings

God commands Jesus (a.s.) to be mindful of the blessings given to him and his mother Mary: “Remember My blessing upon you and upon your mother”, because he was nurtured and raised through the blessing of those favors.

The word “My blessing” (niʿmatī) is singular in its apparent meaning. However, it is the general category of divine blessings that is intended. This is why multiple blessings are enumerated in the verse following it, although not all the blessings that were given to Jesus or to his mother are mentioned; perhaps because remembering all the divine blessings that were given to these two infallible ones would not be easy.

The Qur’an calls Mary and Jesus together a universal miracle: “And We made her and her son a sign for all the nations”(160) because neither in the past has anyone like the Messiah been born only from a mother, nor will such a birth occur in the future, just as God says about Noah’s ark: “And We made it a sign for all the nations.”(161) Indeed, that water should gush forth from the earth and abundant rain should fall from the sky, and a flood should appear in a dry place (the oven), and all should drown except a small number - this is a universal miracle that neither occurred before Noah, nor in his time for another, nor after that.

Based on the aforementioned point, the support (taʾyīd) in “When I supported you with the Holy Spirit” is in reality support for both mother and child, because God gave Mary abundant blessings, some of which are mentioned in Sūrat al-Māʾida and another part in Sūrat Āl ʿImrān, verse 45(162) and Sūrat Maryam, verse 16; however, in the verse under discussion where the types of God’s blessings to Jesus are mentioned, God’s blessings to Mary are not mentioned; but since when a child reaches a position and blessing, his father and mother or his mother will also be blessed, Mary also benefited from these blessings mentioned for Jesus, and they will be considered as divine blessings upon Mary as well.