He said: Indeed, He says it is a cow (baqarah), not tamed and work-worn (dhalul) to plow and stir the earth (tuthir), nor to water (tasqi) the cultivated field (harth); sound and unharmed (musallamah), with no spot or color mark (shiyah) in it. They said: Now you have brought the truth (haqq). So they slaughtered it (dhabahuha), though they were hardly going to do it (kadu yaf'alun).
This verse is the end of the long conversation about the cow. The command that was simple and open at the beginning has now reached its most restricted form. First, only this had been said: slaughter a cow. Then its age was specified: neither old and worn out, nor young and immature, but middle-aged between the two. Then its color was specified: yellow, bright, gladdening those who look. Now its work history, bodily soundness, and uniformity of color are also stated.
The answer comes like this: “Indeed, it is a cow, not tamed and work-worn, plowing the earth, nor watering the cultivated field” (innaha cow baqaratun, not tamed and work-worn dhalul, stirring the earth tuthir al-ard, nor watering tasqi the cultivated field al-harth). This qualification narrows the circle of choice again. Now a middle-aged and bright yellow cow is not enough; it must be a cow that has not been tied to exhausting and repetitive work.
“Tamed and work-worn” (dhalul) comes from the field of lowliness and being made tame. In this verse, the speech is not about moral humiliation; it is the description of a cow that the human being has tamed and put to work. A cow that turns over the earth, or is used to bring water to the cultivated field, has entered the cycle of human labor, production, and benefit. But the cow being sought is not like that.
At the direct level of the verse, this is only a sign for identifying the cow. But at the level of reflection, the meaning becomes deeper. What is placed on the path of nearness to The God should not be from the category of leftovers, the worn-out, the consumed, and the worthless. The calculating human being usually likes to give something whose benefit he has already taken, whose strength he has already consumed, and which no longer has much value for him. But here the cow is not a work animal, not worn out, and not consumed. It has not yet entered their wheel of profit.
This very point makes slaughtering it more difficult. They were stepping back from slaughtering an ordinary cow, but through their own questions they reached a cow that was more particular in age, color, beauty, soundness, and untouchedness. Such a cow is not only harder to find; it is also harder to let go of. Their questions did not lessen the burden of the obligation; they brought it to a point where it was both rare and dear.
Then it says: “sound and unharmed, with no spot or color mark in it” (sound and unharmed musallamah, no spot or color mark shiyah in it). “Sound and unharmed” (musallamah) comes from the root S L M, a root connected with soundness, safety, remaining whole, and being free from harm. Here it should not be taken in the sense of being Muslim. It is the description of the cow: sound, without defect, without breakage, and far from a flaw that would damage its body or outward appearance.
“No spot or color mark in it” also means that there is no spot, sign, patch, or mixture of color in it. Its color must be uniform. So its yellowness is not broken or mixed yellowness; it is pure and without spots. These qualifications bring the command to the utmost degree of particularity: a middle-aged cow, bright yellow, pleasant-looking, unused for work, sound, and uniform.
Here the bitter irony of the story becomes complete. Perhaps at the beginning they could have fulfilled the obligation by slaughtering an ordinary cow. But because they did not take the simple command seriously, the matter became more difficult stage by stage. They asked the questions themselves, narrowed the path themselves, and finally reached a cow that was harder to find and heavier to give up.
Their response is very strange: “Now you have brought the truth” (now ji'ta with the truth bil-haqq). Had the truth not come before this? Was the first command not truth? Were the clarifications of age and color not truth? Musa had said from the beginning: The God commands you to slaughter a cow. But after all these qualifications and explanations, only now do they say: now you have brought the truth.
This sentence lifts the veil from a dangerous mindset: sometimes the human being imagines that the command of The God must be hard, complicated, exceptional, and full of conditions in order to be counted as truth. When the command is simple, he treats it lightly. When the same command becomes difficult and heavy because of his own questions, only then does he feel that he is facing something serious and divine.
This illness is not only in the past. Many human beings still do not believe that the command of The God can be clear, easy, gentle, and within people's capacity. The God brought religion for guidance, purity, mindful guarding, and the removal of heavy burdens; but the hard-preferring human mind sometimes turns religion into a maze of rules, precautions, fears, and specialized layers. In such a condition, ordinary people gradually begin to think that they do not even have the right to understand the Book of The God unless they pass through the gate of a special group.
This inversion is dangerous. A Book that has come for the guidance of people should not be turned into a closed and frightening territory. If the command of The God is simple and within people's capacity, it should not be made harder than it is in the name of religiosity. Making religion hard is not always a sign of mindful guarding; sometimes it is a sign of misunderstanding, fear, domination, or lack of trust in the clarity of the guidance of The God.
The Qur'an makes this same principle clear in other places: The God wants ease for you, not hardship; He has not placed hardship upon you in religion; He does not want to put people in difficulty, but wants to purify them. So if the human being makes a clear command heavy with misplaced questions, invented conditions, and endless strictness, he has moved away from the spirit of guidance, even if the outward form of his work looks religious.
But the story does not end with the sentence “Now you have brought the truth.” The Qur'an immediately lifts the final veil: “So they slaughtered it, though they were hardly going to do it” (so they slaughtered it fa-dhabahuha, and they were hardly near ma kadu doing it yaf'alun). The word “were nearly” (kadu) points to coming close to doing something. When it is said “they were hardly going to do it” (ma kadu yaf'alun), it means they were not close to doing it; the inward resistance was so heavy that they came to the edge of abandoning the matter. Only after the escape paths were closed did they do it.
This sentence shows that their action did not arise from easy and calm surrender. They finally slaughtered, but they almost did not do it. So the main problem from the beginning was not the absence of truth; it was unwillingness to do the truth. The truth did not come late; acceptance came late. The command was clear from the start, but the heart was not ready for action.
When the heart is not surrendered, even clear truth must pass through a maze of question, narrowness, and pressure. In the end, the human being submits to the very thing he could have done from the beginning with ease and dignity.
The lesson of the verse is this: the simplicity of the command of The God should not be treated lightly. The divine path does not always need to be complicated and hard in order to be true. Sometimes the truth is in that first clear and simple command, and it is we who make it difficult upon ourselves through obsessive concern, delay, and hard-tasting religiosity.