Al-Baqarah 2:61

The issue

The Old Testament mentions that as the people of Israel were running away from Pharaoh and his soldiers, they arrived at the edge of the sea, where they could go no further. There, in the depth of their despair, they said to Moses, “It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!” (Exod. 14.12). However, when the Qur’ān retells this account, it contradicts the story by saying that the children of Israel beg Moses to ask Allah to bring forth “of what the earth grows, its green herbs, its cucumbers, its garlic, its lentils, and its onions…” (Q 2.61).

The verse levels another accusation against the Jews by saying they were being punished because they “...kill the prophets” without specifying the names of the prophets. What is unusual is that the great exegetical scholars do not make any concerted efforts to find the identity of these prophets. However, the commentary of al-Jalālayn mentions Yahyā (John the Baptist), son of Zakarīyā (Zechariah), as one of those slain prophets.

Thus, the commentary unintentionally supports a corrupted history, initiated by the Qur’ān, because John the Baptist was not even a contemporary of Moses. In fact, he was born centuries later. Two Linguistic Comments

First, we read in the verse “...killed the prophets undeservedly.” The phrase “undeservedly” confuses the alert reader of the Qur’ān. How is a prophet deservedly slain? That conundrum is why many exegetes neglect to mention this phrase. However, some of them address it briefly, such as the following example:

...“without just cause”: to magnify the awfulness of the crime that they committed. It is common knowledge that a prophet is not slain with just cause; however, in case one was to imagine that possibility, [the Qur’ān] says: “without just cause,” concerning the obvious awfulness of the crime.

Question: Is this comment considered a sufficient or conclusive response?

Second, the verse states “of what the earth grows, its green herbs,…its onions....” The Arabic word that the translators of the Qur’ān render as “onions” in English is fūm. The exegetes offer two meanings for this word:

• The first opinion: is that fūm means “wheat” and is a reference to bread. The exegetes further explained the word means all kinds of grains. The readers say, “[I]t is an old language whose speakers say: ‘Fūmū, meaning to make bread.’”

• The second opinion: holds that fūm is thūm, the Arabic word for garlic. There is a Qur’ānic reading of Ibn Mas‘ūd that says the verse using thūmhā instead of the current word now in the Qur’ān, fūmhā.

Question: If the Qur’ān offers clear guidance, why do the exegetes not know the exact meaning of these words?