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87
وَلَقَد آتَينا موسَى الكِتابَ وَقَفَّينا مِن بَعدِهِ بِالرُّسُلِ ۖ وَآتَينا عيسَى ابنَ مَريَمَ البَيِّناتِ وَأَيَّدناهُ بِروحِ القُدُسِ ۗ أَفَكُلَّما جاءَكُم رَسولٌ بِما لا تَهوىٰ أَنفُسُكُمُ استَكبَرتُم فَفَريقًا كَذَّبتُم وَفَريقًا تَقتُلونَ

Muhammad Asad

For, indeed, We vouchsafed unto Moses the divine writ and caused apostle after apostle to follow him;1 and We vouchsafed unto Jesus, the son of Mary, all evidence of the truth, and strengthened him with holy inspiration.2 [Yet] is it not so that every time an apostle came unto you with something that was not to your liking, you gloried in your arrogance, and to some of them you gave the lie, while others you would slay?3
  • Lit., "We caused him to be followed, after his time, by [all] the other apostles": a stress upon the continuous succession of prophets among the Jews (see Tabari, Zamakhshari, Razi, Ibn Kathir), which fact deprives them of any excuse of ignorance.
  • This rendering of ruh al-qudus (lit., "the spirit of holiness") is based on the recurring use in the Qur'an of the term ruh in the sense of "divine inspiration". It is also recorded that the Prophet invoked the blessing of the ruh al-qudus on his Companion, the poet Hassan ibn Thabit (Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Da'ud and Tirmidhi): just as the Qur'an (58: 22) speaks of all believers as being "strengthened by inspiration (rah) from Him".
  • Lit., "and some you are slaying". The change from the past tense observed throughout this sentence to the present tense in the verb taqtulun ("you are slaying") is meant to express a conscious intent in this respect and, thus, a persistent, ever-recurring trait in Jewish history (Manor I, 377), to which also the New Testament refers (Matthew xxiii, 34-35, 37), and I Thessalonians ii, 15).