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al-Baqara 2:213 — Why there is disagreement

The Qurʾān · Sūra 2: al-Baqara · verse 213

This commentary was written by Claude (Anthropic); it carries no religious authority and should be checked against the classical sources.

2/213

2/213 — Why there is disagreement

"People were one community; God sent prophets as bringers of good news and as warners, and with them He sent down the Book with the truth, to judge between people in what they differed about. And those to whom the Book was given differed about it, after the clear proofs had come to them, out of envy between them."

The verse sets up a picture of history, and its order is striking:

1. Unitykāna'l-nāsu ummatan wāḥida 2. Prophets and a book — to settle the disagreement 3. Disagreement — and this time among those who received the book

The cause of the division, that is, is not given as ignorance. The text says it plainly: min baʿdi mā jāʾathumu'l-bayyinātafter the clear proofs had come.

بَغْيًۢا بَيْنَهُمْ — root ب-غ-ي: to pass the bound, to begrudge. The cause is given not as a lack of knowledge but as a state held against one another.

This is in the same line as the narrative of the Children of Israel in the earlier sections of the sūra: there too a problem of conduct in spite of knowledge was treated (2/75, 2/89, 2/146). The sūra takes disagreement out of being a matter of knowledge and makes it a matter of character.


Roots analysed in this section

ب-غ-ي

The whole of Sūrat al-Baqara