2:121 Those unto whom We have vouchsafed the divine writ [and who] follow it as it ought to be followed98– it is they who [truly] believe in it; whereas all who choose to deny its truth – it is they, they who are the losers!
2:122 O CHILDREN of Israel! Remember those blessings of Mine with which I graced you, and how I favoured you above all other people;
2:123 and remain conscious of [the coming of] a Day when no human being shall in the least avail another, nor shall ransom be accepted from any of them, nor shall intercession be of any use to them, and none shall be succoured.99
2:124 And [remember this:] when his Sustainer tried Abraham by [His] commandments and the latter fulfilled them,100 He said: “Behold, I shall make thee a leader of men.” Abraham asked: “And [wilt Thou make leaders] of my offspring as well?” [God] answered: “My covenant does not embrace the evildoers.”101
2:125 AND LO! We made the Temple a goal to which people might repair again and again, and a sanctuary:102 take then, the place whereon Abraham once stood as your place of prayer.”103 And thus did We command Abraham and Ishmael: “Purify My Temple for those who will walk around it,104 and those who will abide near it in meditation, and those who will bow down and prostrate themselves [in prayer].”
2:126 And, lo, Abraham prayed: “O my Sustainer! Make this a land secure, and grant its people fruitful sustenance – such of them as believe in God and the Last Day.” [God] answered: “And whoever shall deny the truth, him will I let enjoy himself for a short while – but in the end I shall drive him to suffering through fire: and how vile a journey’s end!”
2:127 And when Abraham and Ishmael were raising the foundations of the Temple, [they prayed:] “O our Sustainer! Accept Thou this from us: for, verily, Thou alone art all-hearing, all-knowing!
2:128 “O our Sustainer! Make us surrender ourselves unto Thee, and make out of our offspring105 a community that shall surrender itself unto Thee, and show us our ways of worship, and accept our repentance: for, verily, Thou alone art the Acceptor of Repentance, the Dispenser of Grace!
2:129 “O our Sustainer! Raise up from the midst of our offspring106 an apostle from among themselves, who shall convey unto them Thy messages, and impart unto them revelation as well as wisdom, and cause them to grow in purity: for, verily, Thou alone art almighty, truly wise!”
2:130 And who, unless he be weak of mind, would want to abandon Abraham’s creed, seeing that We have indeed raised him high in this world, and that, verily, in the life to come he shall be among the righteous?
Commentary:
98 Or: “apply themselves to it with true application” – i.e. try to absorb its meaning and to understand its spiritual design.
99 See 2:48. In the above context, this refers, specifically, to the belief of the Jews that their descent from Abraham would “ransom” them on the Day of Judgment – a belief which is refuted in the next verse.
100 The classical commentators have indulged in much speculation as to what these commandments (kalimat, lit., “words”) were. Since, however, the Qur’an does not specify them, it must be presumed that what is meant here is simply Abraham’s complete submission to whatever commandments he received from God.
101 This passage, read in conjunction with the two preceding verses, refutes the contention of the children of Israel that by virtue of their descent from Abraham, whom God made “a leader of men”, they are “God’s chosen people”. The Qur’an makes it clear that the exalted status of Abraham was not something that would automatically confer a comparable status on his physical descendants, and certainly not on the sinners among them.
102 The Temple (al-bayt)- lit., “the House [of Worship]”‘- mentioned here is the Ka’bah in Mecca. In other places the Qur’an speaks of it as “the Ancient Temple” (al-bayt al-‘atiq), and frequently also as “the Inviolable House of Worship” (al-masjid al-haram ). Its prototype is said to have been built by Abraham as the first temple ever dedicated to the One God (see 3:96), and which for this reason has been instituted as the direction of prayer (qiblah) for all Muslims, and as the goal of the annually recurring pilgrimage (hajj). It is to be noted that even in pre-Islamic times the Ka’bah was associated with the memory of Abraham, whose personality had always been in the foreground of Arabian thought. According to very ancient Arabian traditions, it was at the site of what later became Mecca that Abraham, in order to placate Sarah, abandoned his Egyptian bondwoman Hagar and their child Ishmael after he had brought them there from Canaan. This is by no means improbable if one bears in mind that for a camel-riding bedouin (and Abraham was certainly one) a journey of twenty or even thirty days has never been anything out of the ordinary. At first glance, the Biblical statement (Genesis xii, 14) that it was “in the wilderness of Beersheba” (i.e., in the southernmost tip of Palestine) that Abraham left Hagar and Ishmael would seem to conflict with the Qur’anic account. This seeming contradiction, however, disappears as soon as we remember that to the ancient, town-dwelling Hebrews the term “wilderness of Beersheba” comprised all the desert regions south of Palestine, includingthe Hijaz. It was at the place where they had been abandoned that Hagar and Ishmael, after having discovered the spring which is now called the Well of Zamzam, eventually settled; and it may have been that very spring which in time induced a wandering group of Bedouin families belonging to the South-Arabian (Qahtani) tribe of Jurhum to settle there. Ishmael later married a girl of this tribe, and so became the progenitor of the musta’ribah (“Arabianized”) tribes – thus called on account of their descent from a Hebrew father and a Qahtani mother. As for Abraham, he is said to have often visited Hagar and Ishmael; and it was on the occasion of one of these periodic visits that he, aided by Ishmael, erected the original structure of the Ka’bah. (For more detailed accounts of the Abrahamic tradition, see Bukhari’s Sahih, Kitab al-‘Ilm, Tabari’s Ta’rikh al-Umam, Ibn Sad, Ibn Hisham, Mas’fidi’s Murai adh-Dhahab, Yaqut’s Mu’jam al-Buldan, and other early Muslim historians.)
103 This may refer to the immediate vicinity of the Ka’bah or, more probably (Manor I, 461 f.), to the sacred precincts (haram) surrounding it. The word amn (lit., “safety”) denotes in this context a sanctuary for all living beings.
104 The seven-fold circumambulation (tawaf) of the Ka’bah is one of the rites of the pilgrimage, symbolically indicating that all human actions and endeavours ought to have the idea of God and His oneness for their centre.
105 The expression “our offspring” indicates Abraham’s progeny through his first-born son, Ishmael, and is an indirect reference to the Prophet Muhammad, who descended from the latter.
106 Lit., “within them”.
Read! in the name of thy Lord 