Ayaats of the Glorious Qur'an | Chapter 2 || Verse 50-53 |

Ayaats of the Glorious Qur'an | Chapter 2 || Verse 50-53 |

| Translation |
50 - And remember We divided the sea for you and saved you and drowned Pharaoh´s people within your very sight.*
51 - And remember, We appointed forty nights for Moses,** and in his absence you took the calf (for worship), and you did grievous wrong. 
52 - Even then We did forgive you;*** there was a chance for you to be grateful.
53 - And remember We gave Moses the Scripture and the Criterion**** (between right and wrong): There was a chance for you to be guided aright.

| Commentary |
* When the Israelites at last escaped from Egypt, they were pursued by Pharaoh and his host. By a miracle the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, but the host of Pharaoh was drowned: Exod. 14:5-31.

** This was after the Ten Commandments and the Laws and Ordinances had been given on Mount Sinai. Moses was asked up into the Mount, and he was there forty days and forty nights: Exod. 24:18. But the people got impatient of the delay, made a calf of melted gold, and offered worship and sacrifice to it: Exod. 32:1-8.

*** Moses prayed for his people, and Allah forgave them. This is the language of the Qur'an. The Old Testament version is rougher: "The Lord repented of the evil which He thought to do unto His people": Exod. 32:14. The Muslim position has always been that the Jewish (and Christian) scriptures as they stand cannot be traced direct to Moses or Jesus, but are later compilations. Modern scholarship and Higher Criticism has left no doubt on the subject. But the stories in these traditional books may be used in an appeal to those who use them: only they should be spiritualized, as they are here, and especially in Qur’an 2:54.

**** Allah's revelation, the expression of Allah's Will, is the true standard of right and wrong. It may be in a Book or in Allah's dealings in history. All these may be called His Signs or Miracles. In this passage some commentators take the Scripture and the Criterion (Furqan) to be identical. Others take them to be two distinct things: Scripture being the written Book and the Criterion being other Signs. I agree with the latter view. The word ‘Furqan’ also occurs in Qur’an 21:48 in connection with Moses and Aaron (pbut) and in the first verse of Surah (Chapter) 25, as well as in its title, in connection with Muhammad (pbuh). As Aaron (pbuh) received no Book, ‘Furqan’ must mean the other Signs. Al-Mustafa had both the Book and the other Signs: perhaps here too we take the other Signs as supplementing the Book. Cf. Wordsworth's "Arbiter undisturbed of right and wrong." (Prelude, Book 4).