Call to mind also when we entered into a covenant with you, and lifted up the mountain28 over you:-"Take hold," said we, "on what we have revealed to you, with resolution, and remember what is therein, that ye may fear:"
But after this ye turned back, and but for God's grace and mercy toward you, ye had surely been of the lost! Ye know too those of you who transgressed on the Sabbath, and to whom we said, "Be changed into scouted apes:"29
And we made them a warning to those of their day, and to those who came after them, and a caution to the God-fearing:
And when Moses said to his people, "Verily, God bids you sacrifice a COW;"30 they said, "Makest thou a jest of us?" He said, "God keep me from being one of the foolish." They said, "Call on thy Lord for us that He would make plain to us what she is." He said, "God saith, 'She is a cow neither old nor young, but of the middle age between the two:' do therefore what ye are bidden."
They said, "Call on your Lord for us, that he would make plain to us what is her colour." He said, "God saith, 'She is a fawn-coloured cow; her colour is very bright; she rejoiceth the beholders.' "
They said, "Call on they Lord for us that He would make plain to us what cow it is-for to us are cows alike,-and verily, if God please, we shall be guided rightly:"
He said, "God saith, 'She is a cow not worn by ploughing the earth or watering the field, sound, no blemish in her.' " They said, "Now hast thou brought the truth:" Then they sacrificed her; Yet nearly had they done it not:
And when ye slew a man, and strove among yourselves about him, God brought to light what he had hidden:
For we said, "Strike the corpse with part of her." So God giveth life to the dead, and sheweth you his signs, that haply ye may understand.
Then after that your hearts became hard like rocks, or harder still: for verily, from rocks have rivers gushed; others, verily, have been cleft, and water hath issued from them; and others, verily, have sunk down through fear of God: And God is not regardless of your actions.