قَالُوا مَا أَخْلَفْنَا مَوْعِدَكَ بِمَلْكِنَا وَلَٰكِنَّا حُمِّلْنَا أَوْزَارًا مِّن زِينَةِ الْقَوْمِ فَقَذَفْنَاهَا فَكَذَٰلِكَ أَلْقَى السَّامِرِيُّ (87)
(20:87) They answered, "We did not go against the Covenant with you of our own accord; it so happened that we felt burdened with the ornaments of the people and we merely threw them down. *67 ...........Then *68 the Samiri also put down something like these
*67) This excuse was put forward by those people who were involved in the shirk fabricated by the Samiri. They meant to say, "We did not throw down the ornaments with the intention of setting up a calf nor did we know what was going to be made of these, but when the calf was brought before us, we involuntarily got involved in shirk. " The Arabic text which we have translated into: "We felt burdened with the ornaments of the people", simply means this: "The heavy ornaments which our men and women were wearing like the Egyptians proved very burdensome to us in our wanderings in the desert and we did not know how to get rid of them for it appeared very difficult for us to travel in the desert with them." But according to the Bible these ornaments had been borrowed by every family of the Israelites from their Egyptian neighbours with this intention, "....and ye shall put them upon your sons, and upon your daughters and ye shall spoil the Egyptians....and let every man borrow of his neighbour, and every woman of her neighbour, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold....And the Lord gave the people favour in the sight of the Egyptians....so that they lent unto them such things as they required. And they spoiled the Egyptians." And that, too, on the advice of Prophet Moses, whom God Himself had instructed to do this "noble deed." (Exodus, 3: 1422, 11 : 2-3, and I 2 : 35-36).
It is a pity that some of our commentators have interpreted this verse in the light of the above traditions of the Bible. They say that the Israelites felt burdened with the weight of those ornaments which they had borrowed from their Egyptian neighbours, with the intention of carrying them away as a "spoil" bestowed by God.
We are of the opinion that the clause of the verse under discussion means this: "When the people were tired of carrying their ornaments on their bodies, they decided by mutual consultation that all the ornaments should be gathered at one place and it should be noted down how much gold and silver belonged to each of the owners. Then it should be melted into bars and rods and placed on the backs of the beasts of burden." Accordingly, they might have brought their ornaments and thrown them in the common heap.
*68) It is obvious from the context that the answer of the people ended with "threw them down", and Allah Himself has added the remaining story up to the end of the paragraph. It appears from this that the people including the Samiri went on bringing their ornaments and throwing them down into the heap while they were absolutely unaware of what was going to be done by the Samiri. After this the Samiri offered his services to melt it. Then he shaped it into a calf which lowed like a cow. Thus the Samiri deluded the people, saying, "This god of yours has come into being by itself for I had simply thrown the gold in the fire."