The Quran

مَثَلُ الَّذينَ حُمِّلُوا التَّوراةَ ثُمَّ لَم يَحمِلوها كَمَثَلِ الحِمارِ يَحمِلُ أَسفارًا ۚ بِئسَ مَثَلُ القَومِ الَّذينَ كَذَّبوا بِآياتِ اللَّهِ ۚ وَاللَّهُ لا يَهدِي القَومَ الظّالِمينَ

Muhammad Asad

THE PARABLE of those who were graced with the burden of the Torah, and thereafter failed to bear this burden,¹ is that of an ass that carries a load of books [but cannot benefit from them]. Calamitous is the parable of people who are bent on giving the lie to God's messages - for God does not bestow His guidance upon such evildoing folk!

Connecting with the idea - implied in the preceding passage - that God's revelation is a sacred trust as well as a bounty, the discourse turns now to the problem of man's betrayal of this trust, exemplified by the Jews of post-Biblical times. They had been entrusted by God with the task of carrying the message of His oneness and uniqueness to all the world: but they failed in this task inasmuch as they came to believe that they were "God's chosen people" because of their descent from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and that, therefore, the divine message was meant for them alone and not for people of other nations. Hence, too, they came to deny the possibility of prophethood being bestowed on anyone who did not belong to the children of Israel (cf. 2:90 and 94, and the corresponding notes 75 and 79), and so they summarily rejected the idea of Muhammad's prophethood despite the clear predictions of his advent in the Torah itself (see note 33 on 2:42). By thus corrupting the innermost purport of the divine writ bestowed on Moses, they themselves became unable to derive any real spiritual benefit from it, and to live up to its teachings.