2/63-66 — The mountain and the sabbath
"We took a covenant from you and raised the Mount above you: 'Hold fast to what We have given you.'… You know well those among you who transgressed the sabbath. We said to them, 'Be apes, despised.'"
خُذُوا۟ مَا ءَاتَيْنَٰكُم بِقُوَّةٍ — "hold fast to what We have given you". It is said that holding the book requires not a loose contact but a firmness of grip. What is held loosely does not stay in the hand.
The detail of the event is given in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf (7/163): a coastal town where the fish appeared only on the sabbath; the prohibition forbade fishing on the sabbath. The solution transmitted is this: nets and pools are prepared on the sabbath, the fish go into them, and they are gathered on the Sunday. No fishing was done on the sabbath — technically.
This is the exact instance of what we saw at verse 59 of the sūra: there another word was put in the place of the word given; here the letter of the prohibition is preserved and its purpose cancelled. The prohibition appears to have been obeyed; the prohibition does not work.
And the mechanism is the same as the talbīs of verse 42 of the same sūra: there is no need to lie, the form is preserved, the function is emptied out. The Qurʾān marks this behaviour in three separate places with three different examples — which means that what is being described is not a single event but a type.
- A real transformation — the view of the majority; this is the outward sense of the expression.
- A figure — some exegetes have understood that hearts and behaviour became ape-like, that is, fell into imitation and trickery. This view was voiced in the early period as well.
I state no preference. But this should be recorded: the animal chosen is not arbitrary. The ape is the animal that imitates — it copies the appearance and does not understand the function. And that is exactly what had been done: the appearance of the prohibition was preserved, its meaning imitated. The punishment is named in the language of the offence itself.