The Cow in Surah Al-Baqarah: A Murder and a Lesson

The longest surah in the Quran is named after a cow,

and that cow solved a murder.

A man was found dead among the Children of Israel.

No one saw who killed him. Every tribe blamed another,

and they came to Musa, peace be upon him.

And Allah's answer was strange. "Slaughter a

cow." A cow? For a murder?

No one understood, and Musa didn't tell them why.

They said, "Are you mocking us?" Any cow would have

done.

But they started asking. What kind of cow?

"Not old, not young, in between." What color?

"Bright yellow, pleasing to the eye." All cows look alike

to

us. "Never yoked to plow the land, never used to water

the fields, without a single mark." Every question

made the cow harder to find. Ibn Abbas said, "They made

it hard on themselves, so Allah made it hard on them."

They finally found her and slaughtered her.

And Allah says, "They almost didn't."

Then came the command, and only now did they learn what the

cow was for.

They struck the dead man with a piece of the cow, and he came back

to life. The scholars of Tafsir say he spoke one

thing, the name of his killer. Then he died again.

They saw a dead man speak.

And in the very next verse, Allah says, "After that,

their hearts became hard like stone, or even harder."

Sometimes the command is simple. We are the ones who make it

hard.