Ali Quli Qarai, The Qur’ān with a Phrase-by-Phrase English Translation (2005)
and so did the Sāmirī throw.’
88 Then he produced for them a calf
— a [lifeless] body with a low —
and they said, This is your god
and the god of Moses,
so he 1 forgot!
89 Did they not see that it did not answer them,
nor could it bring them any benefit or harm?
90 Aaron had certainly told them earlier,
‘O my people!
You are only being tested by it.
Indeed your Lord is the All-beneficent.
So follow me and obey my command!’
91 They had said, ‘We will keep on clinging to it
until Moses returns to us.’
92 He said, ‘O Aaron!
What kept you,
when you saw them going astray,
93 from following me?
Did you disobey my command?’
94 He said, ‘O son of my mother!
Do not hold my beard or my head!
I feared lest you should say,
“You have caused a rift among the Children of Israel,
and did not heed my word [of advice].” ’
95 He said, ‘What is your business, OSāmirī?’
96 He said, ‘I saw what they did not see.
1 The pronoun may be taken to refer either to the Sāmirī, concerning whom Allah says that he forgot Moses’ teaching about the worship of the true God, or to Moses, who is said by the Sāmirī to have forgotten and left behind his god — the Golden Calf — and gone out in search of him.
