2. Al-Baqara

And when We appointed for wā‘adnā or wa‘adnā Moses forty nights at the end of which We shall give him the Torah for you to implement then you took to yourselves the calf the one which the Samaritan fashioned for you as a god after him that is after he departed for Our appointment and you were evildoers for taking it in worship because you directed your worship to the wrong place.

Then We pardoned you erasing your sins after that act of worship so that you might be thankful for Our favour upon you.

And when We gave to Moses the Scripture the Torah and the Criterion wa’l-furqān is an explicative supplement of Torah that is the one that discriminates faraqa between truth and falsehood and between what is licit and illicit so that you might be guided by it away from error.

And when you said having gone out with Moses to apologise before God for your worship of the calf and having heard what he had said to you; ‘O Moses we will not believe you till we see God openly’ with our own eyes; and the thunderbolt the shout took you and you died while you were beholding what was happening to you.

Then We raised you up brought you back to life after you were dead so that you might be thankful for this favour of Ours.

And We made the cloud overshadow you that is We sheltered you with fine clouds from the heat of the sun while you were in the wilderness; and We sent down in them the clouds upon you manna and quails — which are respectively a type of citrus known as turunjabīn and the quail — and We said ‘Eat of the good things We have provided for you’ and do not store any of it away but they were not grateful for this favour and stored the food and so they were deprived of it; And they did not wrong Us in this but themselves they wronged since the evil consequences of this befell them.

And when We said to them after they came out of the wilderness ‘Enter this city either the Holy House of Jerusalem Bayt al-Maqdis or Jericho Arīhā and eat freely therein wherever you will plentifully and without any restrictions and enter it at the gate its gate prostrating bowing and say ‘our request is for an exoneration’ that is ‘That we be exonerated from our transgressions’ and We shall forgive naghfir a variant reading has one of the two passive forms yughfar or tughfar ‘they will be forgiven’ you your transgressions and We shall give more to those who are virtuous’ — through obedience — in terms of reward.

Then the evildoers among them substituted a saying other than that which had been said to them and said instead ‘A grain inside a hair’ and entered the town dragging themselves on their rears; so We sent down upon the evildoers the replacement of the second person of the previous verse with the overt identification in the third person alladhīna zalamū ‘the evildoers’ is intended to emphasise the depravity of their action wrath a punishment of plague from the heaven for their wickedness for deviating from obedience and within a very short period of time just under seventy thousand of them were dead.

And mention when Moses sought water for his people for they suffered thirst in the wilderness We said ‘Strike with your staff the rock the one that ran off with his robe a light cube-like rock about the size of a man’s head made of marble and he struck it and there exploded there burst and gushed forth from it twelve fountains equal to the number of tribes each people each tribe among them came to know their drinking-place which they did not share with any of the others. And We said to them ‘Eat and drink of that which God has provided and do not be degenerate in the earth seeking corruption’ mufsidīn is a circumstantial qualifier emphasising its operator the subject of the verb lā ta‘thaw ‘do not be degenerate’ derived from ‘athiya meaning afsada ‘to corrupt’.