Here is the English translation of the Urdu text:
Surah Bani Isra’il — Footnote No. 6
These warnings are found at various places in the collection of holy scriptures known as the Bible. The first corruption and its evil consequences were warned about to the Children of Israel in the Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel; and the second corruption and its severe punishment was foretold by Jesus (peace be upon him), which is present in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Below, we reproduce the relevant passages from these books so that this Quranic statement may be fully corroborated.
The first warning about the first great corruption was given by the Prophet David, whose words are as follows:
“They did not destroy the nations as the Lord had commanded them, but mingled with those nations and learned their practices, and began to worship their idols, which became a snare to them. They even sacrificed their daughters to demons and shed innocent blood — the blood of their own sons and daughters… Therefore the anger of the Lord was kindled against His people, and He abhorred His heritage, and He delivered them into the hand of the nations, and those who hated them ruled over them.”
(Psalm 106, verses 34–41)
In this passage, events that were yet to occur are described in the past tense, as if they had already happened. This is a distinctive style of the heavenly scriptures.
Then, when this great corruption actually came to pass, the Prophet Isaiah foretold the resulting destruction in his book in the following words:
“Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged — why will you still be struck down? Why will you continue to rebel?”
(Chapter 1, verse 4–5)
“How the faithful city has become a whore! She that was full of justice — righteousness lodged in her, but now murderers… Your princes are rebels and companions of thieves. Everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts. They do not bring justice to the fatherless, and the widow’s cause does not come to them. Therefore the Lord God of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel, declares: Ah, I will get relief from my enemies and avenge myself on my foes.”
(Chapter 1, verses 21–24)
“They are full of the customs of the East and they practice divination like the Philistines, and they strike hands with the children of foreigners… Their land is also full of idols; they bow down to the work of their own hands, to what their own fingers have made.”
(Chapter 2, verses 6–7)
“And the Lord says: Because the daughters of Zion (that is, the women of Jerusalem) are haughty and walk with outstretched necks and wanton eyes, mincing along as they go, tinkling with their feet — therefore the Lord will strike with a scab the heads of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will lay bare their secret parts… Your men shall fall by the sword and your mighty men in battle. And her gates shall lament and mourn; ravaged, she shall sit on the ground.”
(Chapter 3, verses 16–26)
“Now, behold, the Lord is bringing up against them the waters of the River, mighty and many — the king of Assyria and all his glory — and it will rise over all its channels and go over all its banks.”
(Chapter 8, verse 7)
“These are rebellious people, lying children, children who will not hear the instruction of the Lord; who say to the seers, ‘Do not see,’ and to the prophets, ‘Do not prophesy to us what is right; speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions’… Therefore thus says the Holy One of Israel: Because you despise this word and trust in oppression and perverseness and rely on them, therefore this iniquity shall be to you like a breach in a high wall, bulging out and about to collapse… and He will break it as one breaks a potter’s vessel, smashing it so ruthlessly that among its fragments not a shard will be found for taking fire from the hearth, or a dipper of water from the cistern.”
(Chapter 30, verses 9–14)
Then, when the flood was about to break its banks entirely, the voice of the Prophet Jeremiah rose, and he said:
“Thus says the Lord: What wrong did your fathers find in me that they went far from me, and went after worthlessness, and became worthless?… I brought you into a plentiful land to enjoy its fruits and its good things. But when you came in, you defiled my land and made my heritage an abomination… Long ago you broke your yoke and burst your bonds, and you said, ‘I will not serve.’ Yes, on every high hill and under every green tree you bowed down like a whore (that is, you prostrated before every power and every idol)… As a thief is shamed when caught, so the house of Israel shall be shamed — they, their kings, their officials, their priests, and their (false) prophets, who say to a tree, ‘You are my father,’ and to a stone, ‘You gave me birth.’ For they have turned their back to me, and not their face. But in the time of their trouble they say, ‘Arise and save us.’ But where are your gods that you made for yourself? Let them arise, if they can save you, in your time of trouble; for as many as your cities are your gods, O Judah.”
(Chapter 2, verses 5–28)
“The Lord said to me: Have you seen what apostate Israel (that is, the Israelite state of Samaria) did? She went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and there played the whore (that is, committed idolatry)… And her treacherous sister Judah (that is, the Jewish state of Jerusalem) saw it. Then I saw that when I had sent apostate Israel away and given her her certificate of divorce (that is, withdrawn My mercy from her) because of her adultery (i.e., polytheism), her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the whore. She defiled the land, committing adultery with stone and wood (that is, idol worship).”
(Chapter 3, verses 6–9)
“Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, look and take note! Search her squares to see if you can find a man, one who does justice and seeks truth, that I may pardon her… How can I pardon you? Your children have forsaken me and have sworn by those who are no gods. When I fed them to the full, they committed adultery and trooped to the houses of prostitutes. They were well-fed, lusty stallions, each neighing for his neighbor’s wife. Shall I not punish them for these things? declares the Lord; and shall I not avenge myself on a nation such as this?”
(Chapter 5, verses 1–9)
“O house of Israel, behold, I am bringing against you a nation from afar, declares the Lord. It is an enduring nation, it is an ancient nation, a nation whose language you do not know, nor can you understand what they say. Their quiver is like an open tomb; they are all mighty warriors. They shall eat up your harvest and your food; they shall eat up your sons and your daughters. They shall eat up your flocks and your herds; they shall eat up your vines and your fig trees. They shall batter down your fortified cities in which you trust, with the sword.”
(Chapter 5, verses 15–17)
“The dead bodies of this people will be food for the birds of the air and for the beasts of the earth, and none will frighten them away. And I will silence in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, for the land shall become a waste.”
(Chapter 7, verses 33–34)
“Send them out of my sight and let them go. And when they ask you, ‘Where shall we go?’ you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord: Those who are for pestilence, to pestilence, and those who are for the sword, to the sword; those who are for famine, to famine, and those who are for captivity, to captivity.’”
(Chapter 15, verses 2–3)
Then, exactly at the right moment, the Prophet Ezekiel arose and addressed Jerusalem, saying:
“O city that sheds blood in her midst, so that her time may come, and that makes idols to defile herself!… Behold, the princes of Israel in you, every one according to his power, have been bent on shedding blood. Father and mother are treated with contempt in you; the sojourner suffers extortion in your midst; the fatherless and the widow are wronged in you. You have despised my holy things and profaned my Sabbaths. There are men in you who slander to shed blood, and people in you who eat on the mountains; they commit lewdness in your midst. In you men uncover their fathers’ nakedness. In you they violate women in their menstrual uncleanness. One commits abomination with his neighbor’s wife; another lewdly defiles his daughter-in-law; another in you violates his sister, his father’s daughter. In you they take bribes to shed blood; you take interest and profit and make gain of your neighbors by extortion; and you have forgotten me… Will your courage endure, or will your hands be strong, in the days that I shall deal with you?… I will scatter you among the nations and disperse you through the countries, and I will consume your uncleanness out of you. You shall be profaned by yourself in the sight of the nations, and you shall know that I am the Lord.”
(Chapter 22, verses 3–16)
These were the warnings given to the Children of Israel at the time of the first great corruption. Then, regarding the second great corruption and its terrible consequences, Jesus (peace be upon him) warned them. In Matthew chapter 23, a detailed sermon of his is recorded, in which after strongly criticizing the severe moral decline of his people, he says:
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you desolate.”
(Verses 37–38)
“Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”
(Chapter 24, verse 2)
Then, when the Roman authorities were leading Jesus to the crucifixion, and a great crowd of people including women were following him, weeping and wailing, he made his final address to the crowd and said:
“Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us,’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’”
(Luke, Chapter 23, verses 28–30)
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Here is the English translation:
Surah Bani Isra’il — Footnote No. 7
By this is meant the terrible destruction that befell the Children of Israel at the hands of the Assyrians and the Babylonians. To understand the historical background of this, the excerpts we have quoted above from the books of the prophets are not sufficient alone — a brief historical account is also necessary, so that the student may fully grasp all the reasons why Allah Almighty brought down a scripture-bearing nation from the position of leadership among nations and reduced them to a defeated, enslaved, and utterly degraded people.
After the death of the Prophet Moses, when the Children of Israel entered Palestine, various nations were already settled there — the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites, Philistines, and others. Among these nations, the worst form of polytheism prevailed. Their greatest deity was called El, whom they regarded as the father of the gods, and who was commonly depicted in the likeness of a bull. His wife was named Asherah, and from this union sprang an entire lineage of gods and goddesses numbering up to seventy. The most powerful among his offspring was Baal, who was regarded as the god of rain and vegetation and the lord of earth and sky. In the northern regions, his wife was called Anat, and in Palestine, Astarte. Both of these female deities were goddesses of love and fertility. Beyond these, one deity held dominion over death, another over health, another was assigned the power to bring plague and famine — and thus the entire divine order was divided among a multitude of gods and goddesses. Attributes and deeds of such shameful character were ascribed to these deities that even the most morally corrupt of human beings would not wish to be associated with them. It is therefore evident that people who made such vile beings their gods and worshipped them could hardly have escaped falling into the lowest depths of moral degradation. This is precisely why the conditions discovered through archaeological excavations testify to a severe moral collapse among these peoples. The sacrifice of children was common practice among them. Their temples had become dens of prostitution. Dedicating women as temple prostitutes and committing immoral acts with them was considered part of worship. And many other such moral corruptions were rampant among them.
In the Torah, the instructions given to the Children of Israel through the Prophet Moses had clearly stated: you are to destroy these nations and wrest the land of Palestine from their possession, and you are to refrain from living alongside them and from falling into their moral and ideological corruption.
But when the Children of Israel entered Palestine, they forgot this directive. They did not establish a unified state. They were consumed by tribal rivalries. Each tribe preferred to take a portion of the conquered territory and go its separate way. As a result of this fragmentation, no single tribe became powerful enough to fully cleanse its region of the polytheists. In the end, they had to accept the polytheists living alongside them. Not only that, but small city-states of these polytheistic peoples also continued to exist throughout the conquered territories — states that the Children of Israel were unable to subjugate. This very complaint is voiced in the passage from Psalms that we quoted at the beginning of Footnote No. 6.
The first consequence they had to bear was that through these nations, polytheism seeped into their midst, and along with it, other moral corruptions gradually found their way in as well. This complaint is recorded in the biblical Book of Judges as follows:
“And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. They forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of Egypt, and followed other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them, and provoked the Lord to anger. They forsook the Lord and served Baal and the Ashtaroth, and the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel.”
(Chapter 2, verses 11–13)
The second consequence they had to bear was that the city-states of the polytheistic peoples they had allowed to remain, along with the Philistines — whose entire territory had remained unconquered — formed a united front against the Children of Israel and, through repeated attacks, drove them out of large parts of Palestine, even seizing from them the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord. Eventually, the Children of Israel felt the need to establish a unified kingdom under a single ruler, and at their request, the Prophet Samuel appointed Saul as their king in 1020 BC. (The details of this have been discussed in Surah Al-Baqarah, Section 32.)
This unified kingdom had three rulers: Saul (1020–1004 BC), the Prophet David (peace be upon him) (1004–965 BC), and the Prophet Solomon (peace be upon him) (965–926 BC). These rulers completed the work that the Children of Israel had left unfinished after the Prophet Moses. Only the Phoenician states on the northern coast and the Philistine states on the southern coast remained unsubjugated; these were merely made tributary rather than fully conquered.
After the Prophet Solomon, worldliness again took a powerful hold over the Children of Israel, and they fought among themselves and established two separate kingdoms. In northern Palestine and Transjordan arose the Kingdom of Israel, whose capital eventually became Samaria; and in southern Palestine and the region of Edom arose the Kingdom of Judah, whose capital remained Jerusalem. Between these two kingdoms, intense rivalry and conflict began from the very start and persisted until the very end.
Among these, the rulers and inhabitants of the Kingdom of Israel were the first and most deeply affected by the polytheistic beliefs and moral corruption of the neighboring nations, and this situation reached its extreme when the ruler of that kingdom, Ahab, married Jezebel, the polytheistic princess of Sidon. From that point onward, polytheism and moral corruption began to spread like a flood among the Israelites, driven by the power and resources of the state. The Prophets Elijah and Elisha (peace be upon them both) made every possible effort to stem this flood, but this people would not turn back from the decline into which they were heading. In the end, the wrath of Allah descended upon the Kingdom of Israel in the form of the Assyrians, and from the ninth century BC, continuous Assyrian invasions of Palestine began. During this period, the Prophet Amos (787–747 BC) and then the Prophet Hosea (747–735 BC) rose and delivered repeated warnings to the Israelites, but the intoxication of heedlessness in which they were steeped only grew sharper in the face of reproof. It reached the point where the king of Israel ordered the Prophet Amos to leave the country and banned him from prophesying within the borders of the Kingdom of Samaria. Thousands upon thousands of Israelites were put to the sword, more than 27,000 influential Israelites were expelled from the land and scattered across the eastern provinces of the Assyrian Empire, and peoples from other regions were brought in and settled in the land of Israel — living among whom, the remnant of the Israelite element grew increasingly alienated from its own national civilization day by day.
The second Israelite state, established in southern Palestine under the name of Judah, also fell quickly into polytheism and moral corruption after the Prophet Solomon, though its ideological and moral decline was comparatively slower than that of the Kingdom of Israel — and for this reason, it was also given somewhat more time. Although the Assyrians attacked it repeatedly as well, devastated its cities, and besieged its capital, this state was not destroyed at the hands of the Assyrians but merely became a tributary. Then, when despite the sustained efforts of the Prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, the people of Judah refused to abandon idol worship and immorality, the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, in 598 BC conquered the entire Kingdom of Judah, including Jerusalem, and the king of Judah remained his prisoner. The chain of the Jews’ misdeeds did not end even then, and despite the counsel of the Prophet Jeremiah, instead of reforming their conduct, they attempted to change their fate by rebelling against Babylon. Finally, in 587 BC, Nebuchadnezzar launched a devastating assault and razed every city and town of Judah to the ground, reducing Jerusalem and the Temple of Solomon to rubble so completely that not a single wall of it was left standing. A vast multitude of Jews were expelled from their land and scattered across many countries, and those Jews who remained in their territory were themselves thoroughly humiliated and trampled underfoot at the hands of the neighboring nations.
This was the first great corruption against which the Children of Israel had been warned, and this was the first punishment that was given to them in consequence of it.
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Here is the English translation:
Surah Bani Isra’il — Footnote No. 8
This is a reference to the respite that was granted to the Jews (that is, the people of Judah) after their release from the Babylonian captivity. As for the people of Samaria and Israel, they never rose again after falling into the depths of moral and ideological decline. However, among the inhabitants of Judah there remained an element that was steadfast upon goodness and called others to it. This element continued its work of reform among those who had remained behind in Judah, and also encouraged repentance and turning back to God among those who had been exiled to Babylon and other regions. Eventually, the mercy of Allah came to their aid. The Babylonian empire declined, and in 539 BC the Persian conqueror Cyrus (Khurush or Khusraw) conquered Babylon. In the very next year, he issued a decree granting general permission to the Children of Israel to return to their homeland and resettle there. Consequently, caravans of Jews began making their way back to Judah one after another, a process that continued for a long time. Cyrus also granted the Jews permission to rebuild the Temple of Solomon, though for a considerable period the neighboring nations that had settled in the region continued to offer resistance. Eventually, Darius (Wahya) I, in 522 BC, appointed Zerubbabel — the grandson of the last king of Judah — as governor of Judah, and he undertook the reconstruction of the Holy Temple under the supervision of the Prophets Haggai and Zechariah and the High Priest Jeshua. Then, in 457 BC, the Prophet Ezra (’Uzayr) arrived in Judah with a group of exiles, and the Persian king Artaxerxes (Arta-Ksher-Shazia, also known as Ardeshir) issued a decree authorizing him:
“You are to appoint magistrates and judges who may judge all the people in the province Beyond the River, all such as know the laws of your God. And those who do not know them, you shall teach. Whoever will not obey the law of your God and the law of the king, let judgment be strictly executed on him, whether for death or for banishment or for confiscation of his goods or for imprisonment.”
(Ezra, Chapter 8, verses 25–26)
Taking advantage of this decree, the Prophet Ezra performed the immense work of renewing the Mosaic faith. He gathered all the righteous and upright people of the Jewish nation from every direction and established a strong order. He compiled and published the five books of the Bible, which contained the Torah; organized the religious education of the Jews; enforced the laws of the Sharia and began eliminating the ideological and moral corruptions that had crept into the Children of Israel through the influence of foreign nations; had all polytheistic women — whom Jews had married — divorced; and renewed the covenant with the Children of Israel to worship God and follow His law.
In 445 BC, another group of exiles returned to Judah under the leadership of Nehemiah, and the Persian king appointed Nehemiah as governor of Jerusalem, authorizing him to rebuild its city walls. In this way, after a hundred and fifty years, Jerusalem was once again inhabited and became the center of Jewish religion and civilization. However, the Israelites of northern Palestine and Samaria derived no benefit from the reform and renewal brought by the Prophet Ezra. Instead, in competition with Jerusalem, they constructed their own religious center on Mount Gerizim and attempted to make it the qiblah of the People of the Book. This further widened the rift between the Jews and the Samaritans.
With the decline of the Persian Empire, the conquests of Alexander the Great, and then the rise of the Greeks, the Jews suffered a severe blow for a period. After Alexander’s death, his empire was divided into three kingdoms, of which the region of Syria fell to the Seleucid kingdom whose capital was Antioch. Its ruler, Antiochus III, occupied Palestine in 198 BC. These Greek conquerors, who were polytheists in religion and libertines in morality, found the Jewish religion and civilization deeply objectionable. They began promoting Greek culture through political and economic pressure, and a considerable element from among the Jews themselves became their instrument. This external interference sowed division within the Jewish nation. One group adopted Greek dress, Greek language, Greek social customs, and Greek games, while another group held firmly to their own civilization. In 175 BC, when Antiochus IV — whose epithet was Epiphanes, meaning “the manifestation of God” — ascended the throne, he set out to uproot the Jewish religion and civilization with the full force of tyranny. He forcibly installed idols in the Temple of Jerusalem and compelled the Jews to bow down before them. He halted sacrifice at the altar. He ordered the Jews to offer sacrifices at polytheistic altars. He prescribed the death penalty for anyone who kept a copy of the Torah in their home, observed the Sabbath commandments, or had their children circumcised. But the Jews were not subdued by this oppression, and a powerful movement arose among them, known in history as the Maccabean Revolt. Although in this struggle the Hellenized Jews had all their sympathies with the Greeks and actively collaborated with the tyrants of Antioch in suppressing the Maccabean revolt, the spirit of religiosity breathed into the common Jews by the Prophet Ezra was so powerfully alive that they all joined the Maccabees, and eventually they drove out the Greeks and established their own independent religious state, which endured until 67 BC. The boundaries of this state gradually expanded to encompass the entire territory that had once been under the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, and even a large part of Philistia came under its control — a region that had not been subjugated even in the time of the Prophets David and Solomon (peace be upon them both).
It is to these very events that the verse under commentary in the Quran refers.
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Here is the English translation:
Surah Bani Isra’il — Footnote No. 9
The historical background of this second great corruption and its punishment is as follows:
The moral and religious spirit with which the Maccabean movement had arisen gradually perished, and its place was taken by pure worldliness and hollow outward show. Eventually, divisions broke out among them, and they themselves invited the Roman conqueror Pompey to come to Palestine. Pompey accordingly turned his attention to the country in 63 BC, occupied Jerusalem, and brought the independence of the Jews to an end. However, it was the consistent policy of the Roman conquerors that rather than establishing their own direct administration over conquered territories, they preferred to extract what they needed indirectly through local rulers. They therefore established a native state in Palestine under their patronage, which ultimately came into the hands of a shrewd Jew named Herod in 40 BC. He is known as Herod the Great. His rule over all of Palestine and Transjordan lasted from 40 to 4 BC. On one hand he kept the Jews satisfied by patronizing their religious leaders, and on the other he earned the goodwill of Caesar by promoting Roman civilization and displaying the utmost loyalty to the Roman Empire. By this time, the religious and moral condition of the Jews had sunk, through a gradual process of deterioration, to the very lowest depths of decline.
After Herod, his kingdom was divided into three parts.
One of his sons, Archelaus, became the ruler of Samaria, Judea, and northern Idumea, but in 6 AD, Emperor Augustus deposed him and placed his entire kingdom under a Roman governor — an arrangement that remained in place until 41 AD. This was the very period when Jesus (peace be upon him) rose to reform the Children of Israel, and all the religious leaders of the Jews conspired together to oppose him and sought to have him condemned to death by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate.
Herod’s second son, Herod Antipas, became the ruler of the region of Galilee in northern Palestine and Transjordan. He is the one who, at the request of a dancing girl, had the head of the Prophet John (Yahya, peace be upon him) cut off and presented to her as a gift.
His third son, Philip, became the ruler of the territory stretching from Mount Hermon to the River Yarmouk, and he was even more deeply immersed in Roman and Greek civilization than his father and brothers. In his territory, there was even less room for any word of goodness to take root than there was in the other regions of Palestine.
In 41 AD, the Romans made Herod Agrippa — the grandson of Herod the Great — the ruler of all the territories over which Herod the Great had once held sway. After coming to power, this man inflicted extreme persecution upon the followers of Jesus (peace be upon him) and devoted all his efforts to crushing the movement of God-consciousness and moral reform that was proceeding under the guidance of the disciples.
To gain a true appreciation of the condition of the general Jewish population and their religious leaders during this period, one should study the critiques that Jesus (peace be upon him) directed against them in his sermons — all of which are preserved in the four Gospels. And to gauge the depths of their degradation, it is sufficient to note that before the very eyes of this nation, the head of a man as pure as the Prophet John (peace be upon him) was severed, yet not a single voice was raised against this great injustice. The religious leaders of the entire nation demanded the death sentence for Jesus (peace be upon him), and apart from a small number of righteous individuals, there was no one who mourned this calamity. Indeed, when Pontius Pilate asked this ill-fated people — it being a festival day on which, by custom, he was authorized to release one prisoner condemned to death — “Shall I release Jesus or Barabbas?” the entire assembled crowd cried out with one voice: “Release Barabbas.” This was, as it were, the final proof that Allah Almighty established against this nation.
Not much time had passed after this when a fierce conflict broke out between the Jews and the Romans, and between 64 and 66 AD the Jews rose in open revolt. Both Herod Agrippa II and the Roman procurator Florus failed to suppress the rebellion. Eventually, the Roman Empire crushed it through a severe military campaign, and in 70 AD, Titus conquered Jerusalem by force of arms. In the massacre that took place on this occasion, 133,000 people were killed, 67,000 were captured and enslaved, thousands were seized and sent to work in the mines of Egypt, and thousands more were taken to various cities to be used as fodder for wild animals in amphitheaters and coliseums, or as targets in gladiatorial games. All the tall and beautiful young women were selected for the victors, and the city of Jerusalem and the Temple were demolished and razed to the ground. After this, Jewish power and influence was so thoroughly erased from Palestine that for two thousand years it found no opportunity to raise its head again, and the Holy Temple of Jerusalem was never rebuilt. The Emperor Hadrian later repopulated the city, but it was now called Aelia, and for a very long time Jews were not permitted to enter it.
This was the punishment that the Children of Israel received in consequence of the second great corruption.
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Here is the English translation:
Surah Bani Isra’il — Footnote No. 10
One should not fall into the misapprehension that the Children of Israel are the addressees of this entire passage. The actual addressees are the disbelievers of Makkah. However, since a few instructive lessons from the history of the Children of Israel had been presented here in order to warn them, these sentences were addressed to the Children of Israel as a parenthetical remark — so that they might serve as a prelude to those reformatory discourses which were, just a year later, to take place in Madinah.
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Here is the English translation:
Surah Bani Isra’il — Footnote No. 11
The meaning is that any person, group, or nation that does not come to the straight path through the warning and guidance of this Quran should then be prepared to face the same punishment that the Children of Israel suffered.
SUMMARY OF THE TOPIC
The Rise and Fall of the Children of Israel: A Quranic Perspective
Summary of Footnotes 6–11, Surah Bani Isra’il
The Biblical Warnings (Footnote 6)
The Quran’s account of the two great corruptions of the Children of Israel finds comprehensive corroboration in the Bible itself. The prophets David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel each delivered increasingly urgent warnings about the first corruption — the abandonment of monotheism, rampant moral decay, idol worship, injustice toward the weak, and widespread immorality. Jesus (peace be upon him), as recorded in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, foretold the second corruption and its catastrophic consequences, warning Jerusalem of total desolation and prophesying that not one stone of the Temple would remain upon another.
The First Great Corruption and Its Punishment (Footnote 7)
When the Children of Israel entered Palestine after the death of the Prophet Moses, they failed to follow divine instructions to cleanse the land of its polytheistic inhabitants. Tribal rivalries prevented them from forming a unified state, and they allowed pagan nations to remain among them. The inevitable result was that idol worship — centered on deities such as El, Baal, Asherah, and Astarte, whose worship involved temple prostitution, child sacrifice, and extreme moral depravity — seeped into Israelite society.
This spiritual and moral collapse unfolded in stages. The unified kingdom under Saul, David, and Solomon temporarily reversed the decline, but after Solomon, the nation split into two rival kingdoms: Israel in the north and Judah in the south. The Kingdom of Israel fell first, succumbing to Assyrian invasions from the ninth century BC onward. Over 27,000 Israelites were deported and scattered, foreign peoples were resettled in their land, and the Israelite identity was gradually erased. The Kingdom of Judah, though slower to decline, ultimately suffered the same fate. In 587 BC, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon razed Jerusalem and the Temple of Solomon completely, deported vast numbers of Jews, and reduced the remaining population to utter humiliation.
The Respite and Partial Renewal (Footnote 8)
After the Babylonian captivity, divine mercy granted the Jews another opportunity. In 539 BC, Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered Babylon and permitted the Jews to return to their homeland. The Temple was rebuilt under Zerubbabel, and the Prophet Ezra arrived in 457 BC to undertake a comprehensive religious renewal — compiling the Torah, reorganizing religious education, enforcing Mosaic law, dissolving unlawful marriages with polytheistic women, and renewing the national covenant with God. Nehemiah subsequently rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem in 445 BC, and the city was restored as the center of Jewish faith and civilization.
However, the Samaritans refused to participate in this renewal and established a rival religious center on Mount Gerizim, deepening the sectarian divide. Later, Greek conquest under the Seleucids brought severe cultural pressure, culminating in the brutal persecution by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who desecrated the Temple, banned Torah observance, and imposed the death penalty for circumcision and Sabbath-keeping. The heroic Maccabean Revolt eventually expelled the Greeks and established an independent Jewish state that endured until 67 BC, restoring Jewish sovereignty over a territory even broader than that of the earlier kingdoms.
The Second Great Corruption and Its Punishment (Footnote 9)
The spiritual vitality of the Maccabean movement gave way to worldliness and internal division. The Jews themselves invited the Roman general Pompey into Palestine in 63 BC, ending their independence. Under Herod the Great and his successors — ruling as Roman client kings — Jewish religious and moral life reached its lowest point. It was in this environment that Jesus (peace be upon him) arose to call his people back to righteousness, only to be opposed by the religious establishment and condemned through their machinations.
The nation’s moral bankruptcy was starkly illustrated when the crowd chose to free the criminal Barabbas over Jesus, a moment the author describes as Allah’s final proof against them. Open revolt against Rome between 64 and 66 AD led to catastrophic consequences. In 70 AD, Titus sacked Jerusalem: 133,000 were killed, 67,000 enslaved, thousands were sent to mines or used in gladiatorial spectacles, and the Temple was completely destroyed. Jewish influence in Palestine was extinguished for two thousand years, and the Holy Temple was never rebuilt. Emperor Hadrian later renamed the city Aelia, barring Jews from entering it for generations.
A Parenthetical Address (Footnote 10)
Although these passages appear to address the Children of Israel directly, the primary audience of the Surah is in fact the disbelievers of Makkah. The history of the Children of Israel was invoked as a powerful cautionary lesson for them. The direct address to the Jews functions as a parenthetical remark, also serving as a deliberate prelude to the more extensive reformatory discourses that would follow just a year later in Madinah.
The Universal Warning (Footnote 11)
The lessons drawn from Israelite history are not confined to one people or one era. Any individual, community, or nation that refuses to heed the guidance and warnings of the Quran should expect to face the same devastating consequences that befell the Children of Israel. The pattern of divine justice is consistent and universal: corruption and defiance bring ruin, while sincere return to righteousness opens the door to mercy and restoration.
Thanks to Quran.com for Tafheemul Quran & Claude Ai in preparing this article
Messages from Quran 