Transliteration:( Qaaloo maaa akhlafnaa maw'idaka bimalkinna wa laakinna hummilnaaa awzaaram min zeenatil qawmi faqazafnaahaa fakazaalika alqas Saamiriyy )
120. In fact, due to the misguidance of Samari, our thinking was no longer straight and thus we became involved in this polytheism.Â
121. The word 'AWZAAR' (loads) is the plural of WIZAR (load), which means burden. The Minister is called 'Wazeer', because he carries the burden of the state.
122. From this we learn that even if the wealth of a infidel combatant is with you on loan you should seize it after his destruction, because the gold jewellery which Israelites had asked the people of Pharaoh, on loan, were not returned to them. Returning them would have revealed the secret. Now, after these people were drowned, the Israelites became owners of the jewellery. But because their law had made it unlawful to devour the wealth of the spoils of war, they spent it for the building of the golden calf. The evil gold of the wicked Pharoites sowed seeds of mischief among the Israelites. The wealth of the evildoers, too, is evil.
123. This means we placed the jewellery that was with us into the fire to smelt them, while Samari placed the gold that he had seized into it. Samari was one of the jewellers, and a respectable citizen of the tribe of Samara.
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The tafsir of Surah Ta-Ha verse 87 by Ibn Kathir is unavailable here.
Please refer to Surah Taha ayat 83 which provides the complete commentary from verse 83 through 89.
(20:87) They answered: “We did not break our promise with you out of our own volition; but we were laden with the load of people’s ornaments, and we simply threw them down[67](into the fire), and[68] the Samiri also threw down something,
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 were laden with burdens of 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 neighbors 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 neighbor, and every woman of her neighbor, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold….And the Lord gave the people favor 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: 14-22, 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 neighbors, 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”, 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.
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