2/21-22 — The first command
"O people! Serve your Lord, who created you and those before you; perhaps you will guard yourselves. He who made the earth a bed for you and the sky a building; who sent down water from the sky and brought forth with it fruits as provision for you. So do not set up equals to God when you know."
The twenty verses up to here were depiction and description. The first sentence built in the imperative comes here, and the command is: serve.
"O people" — the whole of humanity is addressed. This is a choice that deserves notice. In the sūras that came down in the Medinan period the predominant address is "O you who believe"; the general address to humanity is more the character of the Meccan sūras. Al-Baqara, for all that it is a Medinan sūra, gives its first command to all people.
The logic of this within the sūra is plain: the opening section had divided people into three (those who guard themselves, those who cover over, the two-faced). Once the division is complete the call is made to all of them at once. The classification, that is, was not made in order to throw anyone outside the call.
The command does not come in the form "serve God"; it comes as "serve your Lord". And immediately afterwards the ground of this name is enumerated: the one who created you, who created those before you, who prepared the earth and the sky, who sent down the water, who brought forth the fruit.
The demand for service, then, is grounded not on authority but on nurture and care. Not "I am powerful, obey"; but "I brought you up". In al-Fātiḥa we saw that the word Rabb carries ownership and nurture together; here that sense turns into a proof.
فِرَاش (firāsh) — the earth a bed. Root f-r-sh: to spread, to lay out. From the same root comes farsh (a spread, a carpet).
A misunderstanding has to be shut off at the outset here: this expression does not say the earth is flat. A bed is not flat either — it is spread out, it folds, it takes the shape of the ground beneath it. What the word says is not shape but function: the earth has been made such that one can stand on it, live on it, rest on it. The Qurʾān names the same function with other words too — it describes the earth as mihād (a cradle) and as dhalūl (a docile mount) (al-Nabaʾ 78/6; al-Mulk 67/15). All three say the same thing: this ground has been set up to be lived on.
بِنَاء (bināʾ) — the sky a building. Root b-n-y: to build, to construct. The sky is named not as "emptiness" but as a structure that has been built. Elsewhere the Qurʾān opens this further: "And We made the sky a guarded roof" (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/32).
The expression "guarded roof" has a side that overlaps with what is known today — the atmosphere really is a layer that filters harmful radiation and the greater part of incoming bodies. I do not write this as a claim that the verse announces a scientific discovery; the verse does not speak of the atmosphere. I say only this: the word chosen for the sky is not "emptiness" but "structure", and that choice is one that says the thing above us is functional.
Root n-d-d. Nidd: an equal, a match, a rival. Association of partners is described here not as "making idols" but as "taking equals", and that description is far wider. One does not have to put a thing in God's place; it is enough to put it on the same line.
وَأَنتُمْ تَعْلَمُونَ — "and that while you know". The sentence attaches once more to the finding of verse 6: the issue is not ignorance but the covering of what is known.