So We made it a deterrent punishment (nakal) for what stood before it and what came behind it, and an admonition (maw'izah) for the people of mindful guarding (muttaqin).
This verse is the summing up of the event of the people of the Sabbath, but its summing up is not only historical. The Qur'an does not want us to stop at curiosity about the mechanics of “apes, humiliated and driven away” (qiradah khasi'in), the weighty expression that came in the previous verse. Verse 66 shows why that event was preserved in Qur'anic memory: The God made it a deterrent punishment (nakal) and made it an admonition (maw'izah) for the people of mindful guarding (muttaqin).
First, attention must be given to the expression “so We made it” (fa-ja'alnaha). Fa-ja'alnaha means: “so We placed it / made it / appointed it.” In Arabic, the final part of this word, “ha,” is a feminine singular pronoun; that is, “that feminine thing,” or more simply, “it.” The question is: what exactly does this “it” return to? Does it return to the event of the Sabbath itself? To the punishment? To the state of transformation? Or to the account of that group? Since in the previous verse there is no clear and nearby feminine noun that lets us say without question that the pronoun must return to it, this pronoun has room for reflection.
When Al-Baqarah is read alongside Al-A'raf 7:163 to 7:166, the picture becomes clearer. In Al-A'raf, the story of the people of the Sabbath is given in more detail: a town by the sea, the test of the fish, a group that crossed the limit, a group that forbade, and then the punishment of those who rebelled. Therefore, in Al-Baqarah 2:66, “ha” can be returned to the whole account and punishment: the event that included transgression in the Sabbath, warning, rebellion, and the severe result of “apes, humiliated and driven away.” This point itself shows that understanding this verse becomes more complete through the Qur'an-by-Qur'an method, because Al-Baqarah alludes, while Al-A'raf opens the scene more fully.
So the general meaning is this: The God did not leave that account and punishment behind in the past; He turned it into a deterrent sign on the path of history. An event that took place in one time and place came, in Qur'anic language, out of the boundary of that time and gained a function for others as well.
The key word of the verse is deterrent punishment (nakal). Nakal comes from the root N K L and is connected with holding back, restraining, repelling, and a punishment that prevents the repetition of the crime. In the linguistic image of this root, a kind of restraint and chain can also be seen: something that holds back rebellious movement and prevents it from continuing. So nakal is not only a soft and mental “lesson”; it is a deterrent punishment, something that holds the human being and society back from repeating the same breaking of the limit.
The choice of this word is very precise. Their sin was transgression (i'tida): crossing the limit. The divine response became deterrent punishment (nakal): a restraint against crossing the limit. I'tida means boundary-breaking; nakal means a restraint and brake against boundary-breaking. This lexical contrast clarifies the semantic core of the verse: when the human being breaks the divine limit, The God sometimes turns the result of that boundary-breaking into a sign that holds others back from the same path.
But the verse does not only say deterrent punishment (nakal). At the end it says: “and an admonition for the people of mindful guarding” (wa-maw'izatan lil-muttaqin). Deterrent punishment (nakal) is the deterrent effect of the event; admonition (maw'izah) is its awakening effect in the heart of the people of mindful guarding (taqwa). Deterrent punishment can hold the human being from the outside, but admonition awakens the inside of the human being. Anyone may fear the consequence of a punishment, but only the person of mindful guarding takes admonition from it for self-reform.
Now we must pay attention to the very subtle expression “for what was between its hands and what was behind it” (lima bayna yadayha wa-ma khalfaha). The Qur'an does not say that We made it a nakal for past, present, and future. This is not because Arabic lacked words for past and future. The Qur'an itself repeatedly uses “before” (qabl), “after” (ba'd), “the first” (al-ula), “the last” (al-akhirah), “those who remained behind” (al-ghabirin), “the later ones” (al-akhirin), and other expressions. So the choice of “between its hands” (bayna yadayha) and “behind it” (khalfaha) is not from the inability of language; it is from the precision of the Qur'anic image.
In ordinary human thought, the future is what lies ahead, and the past is what remains behind. We also say the future is before us and the past is behind us. But here the Qur'an pictures the event from the viewpoint of the event itself, not from the viewpoint of a human being walking through time. The event of the people of the Sabbath stands like a sign in the path of history. What stands in front of this sign and faces it is “between its hands” (bayna yadayha), and what comes after it and from behind it along the extension of history is “behind it” (khalfaha).
From this view, “between its hands” (bayna yadayha) can point to people and situations that were in the near field of the effect of that event: those who had the event before them and should have stopped because of it. “What was behind it” (ma khalfaha) also points to those who come after that event: generations that enter history from behind it and must learn from it.
So the Qur'an does not create only a dry division of time. It does not say past, present, and future; rather, it creates a living image: the event stands in the middle of history; it holds back what faces it and admonishes what comes behind it. This linguistic subtlety makes the Sabbath event not merely a closed file in the past, but a living sign for every time when the human being again stands before the divine limit.
Even if someone understands this expression in temporal language and says the intent is the earlier and later generations, the main result is not lost. The meaning still remains that the event of the people of the Sabbath went beyond its own time and became a sign for others as well. But the Qur'anic expression of “between its hands” and “behind it” is more delicate than a simple historical phrase, because it shows the event as something present, standing, and capable of being faced.
From the viewpoint of the verb too, care is needed. The past-tense verb in the verse is “so We made it” (fa-ja'alnaha): so We placed it, made it, appointed it. But in the phrase “for what was between its hands and what was behind it” (lima bayna yadayha wa-ma khalfaha), no separate verb has come. The Qur'an did not say “what was before it” or “what was behind it.” It spoke with a nominal and pictorial structure. This lets the meaning remain more open: not only a limited past, but whatever enters the field of effect of this sign.
This verse also clarifies our contemporary question. Today, if a group from the Children of Israel does not observe the Sabbath, or practices usury, or if groups of Muslims rebel against the commands of The God, do we have the right to call them “apes” and apply the judgment of that same event to them? The cautious and Qur'an-centered answer is: no. The human being does not have the right to apply a specific divine punishment in his own name to contemporary human beings and humiliate people with animal names. The God made that specific event a deterrent punishment (nakal); we are commanded to take lesson from it, not commanded to turn it into insults.
This position is not only a general ethical caution; it is also in harmony with the Qur'an itself. In Al-Hujurat 49:11, the Qur'an forbids one people from mocking another people. So no one can turn the verse of the people of the Sabbath into a tool of ethnic mockery, racial hostility, or humiliation of the people of a religion. If someone uses a divine nakal to humiliate others, he himself has moved away from the admonition of the verse.
But this does not mean that the warning of the verse becomes ineffective. If today any human being, from any people and any religion, knows the divine limit and, for profit, pleasure, market, power, lust, usury, wrongdoing, or scheming, works around it, the message of the verse carries a warning about him too. Not in the sense that we say The God has transformed him in that same way or that we have the right to call him an ape (qiradah); rather, in the sense that the same ethical law remains: breaking the limit after awareness distances the human being from mindful guarding and can pull him from dignity into loss and humiliation.
So the account of the people of the Sabbath is alive for today as well, but not as a tool of ethnic or sectarian humiliation. This account is a nakal for every society that wants to work around the limit of The God; and it is a maw'izah for every person of mindful guarding who wants to awaken himself before falling. If a Jew, a Muslim, a Christian, or any other human being plays games with the command of The God, he should fear this verse; but no one has the right to seat himself in the place of The God and name divine punishment upon others.
Here the difference between deterrent punishment (nakal) and admonition (maw'izah) becomes clear again. A person without mindful guarding (taqwa) may turn the deterrent punishment of others into a weapon; but the person of mindful guarding turns it into inward care. Before pointing the finger of accusation toward others, the person of mindful guarding (muttaqi) asks himself: where is my limit? What is my Sabbath? Where am I working around the command of The God for benefit? Where have I kept the appearance of religion while breaking the spirit of mindful guarding (taqwa)?
For this reason, the ending of the verse with “for the people of mindful guarding” (lil-muttaqin) is very precise. The admonition is for the people of mindful guarding (muttaqin), because only the person of mindful guarding (muttaqi) turns the event of others into a mirror for reforming himself. Someone who has no mindful guarding may hear the story and only issue judgment about others. But the person of mindful guarding (muttaqi) learns from that same story the path of watching over himself.
This verse gathers the discussion of the previous verses. Verse 63 said: take what has been given with strength and remember what is in it so that you may practice taqwa. Verse 65 showed that a group transgressed in the Sabbath and fell. Verse 66 now says that fall was not only the punishment of one group; it became a deterrent sign and an admonition for the people of mindful guarding.
So the lesson of the verse is this: do not turn the event of the people of the Sabbath into historical curiosity or ethnic humiliation. The God made it nakal so that the human being would stop from boundary-breaking, and made it maw'izah so that the person of mindful guarding would awaken within himself. Nakal holds back from the outside; maw'izah gives life from within.