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II, 89-96. THE CHAPTER OF THE HEIFER.
they said, 'We hear but disobey;' and they were made to drink the calf down into their hearts for their unbelief1. Say, 'An evil thing is it which your belief bids you do, if ye be true believers.' Say, 'If the abode of the future with God is yours alone and not mankind's: long for death then if ye speak the truth.' But they will never long for it because of what their hands have sent on before; but God is knowing as to the wrong doers.
[90] Why, thou wilt find them the greediest of men for life; and of those who associate others with God one would fain live for a thousand years,-but he will not be reprieved from punishment by being let live, for God seeth what they do.
Say, 'Who is an enemy to Gabriel2?' for he hath revealed to thy heart, with God's permission, confirmation of what had been before, and a guidance and glad tidings to believers. Who is an enemy to God and His angels and His apostles and Gabriel and Michael?-Verily, God is an enemy to the unbelievers. We have sent down to thee conspicuous signs, and none will disbelieve therein except the evildoers. Or every time they make a covenant, will a part of them repudiate it? Nay, most of them do not believe.
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[95] And when there comes to them an apostle confirming what they have, a part of those who have received the Book repudiate God's book, casting it behind their backs as though they did not
1 Exodus xxxii. 20.
The Jews objected to Mohammed's assertion that the archangel Gabriel revealed the Qur'ân to him, saying that he was an avenging angel, and that had it been Michael, their own guardian angel (Dan. xii. 1), they would have believed.
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