The Quran

Preface

قالَ فَاذهَب فَإِنَّ لَكَ فِي الحَياةِ أَن تَقولَ لا مِساسَ ۖ وَإِنَّ لَكَ مَوعِدًا لَن تُخلَفَهُ ۖ وَانظُر إِلىٰ إِلٰهِكَ الَّذي ظَلتَ عَلَيهِ عاكِفًا ۖ لَنُحَرِّقَنَّهُ ثُمَّ لَنَنسِفَنَّهُ فِي اليَمِّ نَسفًا

Yusuf Ali

(Moses) said: “Get thee gone! but thy (punishment) in this life will be that thou wilt say,¹ ###?touch me not?; and moreover (for a future penalty) thou hast a promise that will not fail:² Now look at thy god, of whom thou hast become a devoted worshipper: We will certainly (melt) it in a blazing fire and scatter it broadcast in the sea!”³

He and his kind were to become social lepers, untouchables; perhaps also sufficiently arrogant to hold others at arm’s length, and say “Noli me tangere” (touch me not).
Namely, the promised Wrath of God: see 20:81; 89:25.
The cast effigy was re-melted and destroyed. Thus ends the Samiri’s story, of which the lessons are indicated n. 2620 above. It may be interesting to pursue the transformations of the word Samiri in later times. For its origin see notes 2605 and 2608 above. Whether the root of Samiri was originally Egyptian or Hebrew does not affect the later history. Four facts may be noted. (1) There was a man bearing a name of that kind at the time of Moses, and he led a revolt against Moses and was cursed by Moses. (2) In the time of King Omri (903-896 B.C.) of the northern kingdom of Israel, there was a man called Shemer, from whom, according to the Bible, was bought a hill on which was built the new capital of the kingdom, the town of Samaria. (3) The name of the hill was Shomer ( = watchman, vigilant guardian), and that form of the name also appears as the name of a man (see 2 Kings 22:21); some authorities think the town was called after the hill and not after the man (Hastings’s Encyclopedia of Religions and Ethics), but this is, for our present purposes, immaterial. (4) There was and is a dissenting community of Israelites called Samaritans, who have their own separate Pentateuch and Targum, who claim to be the true Children of Israel, and who hold the Orthodox Jews in contempt as the latter hold them in contempt: they claim to be the true guardians (Shomerim) of the Law, and that is probably the true origin of the name Samaritan, which may go further back in time than the foundation of the town of Samaria. I think it is probable that the schism originated from the time of Moses, and that the curse of Moses on the Samiri explains the position.