Chapter 10: And Now the Cow

Verses 67-73 gave this surah its name. It is a bizarre exchange between Musa and the Children of Israel, narrated presumably by Allah, where Musa instructs the people to sacrifice a cow.
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The Biblical narratives

If you are not familiar with the biblical text, here are summaries of both passages:
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The Red Heifer (Number 19:1-13): God commands Moses and Aaron to speak to the children of Israel that they take red heifer, without a blemish, and upon which never came yoke. This heifer should be slaughtered and completely burnt, together with a piece of cedar-wood, hyssop, and scarlet. The ashes from the Red Heifer are then used for ritual cleansing, by mixing it with water and sprinkling the water on the person or object being cleansed. According to Jewish tradition, nine Red Heifers were slaughtered in total, the ninth by Ezra the Scribe in the fifth Century BCE. The tenth and last one will be done by the Messiah.
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The female calf (Deuteronomy 21:1-9): If one is found slain in the field, and killer’s identity is unknown, then the local elders measure the distance from the body to the nearest city. The elders of that city take a young cow (of unspecified colour) upon which never came yoke, to a barren creek, behead the animal, wash their hands over its dead body of the cow, declare that they do not know who shed the blood, and ask that God should not suffer innocent blood to remain in the midst of the people (that is, to help them solve the crime). This ceremony was abandoned at least 20 centuries ago, long before Muhammad’s time.
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The Quranic Account

In the Quran, the Children of Israel suspect that Musa ridicules them, and demand that he get back to his Lord for further details, so he does. He comes back, saying that this cow should be neither too old nor too young.
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This is not enough. They want to know what colour the cow should be, so Musa goes back to his Lord and returns with the answer: intense yellow, giving delight to the beholders. Some translations say “Fawn coloured”, like a Labrador dog.
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Now it appears that Musa got the message and they don’t need to send him back to his Lord for more particulars. He continues: she is a cow not made submissive, that had not been used to work on the land, and without a blemish in her.
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Their reply (2:71) “… Now you have brought the truth …” is very curious, as it implies that they knew all along what needed to be done. Were the Children messing with Musa? In the end they fetch the required cow, and reluctantly sacrifice her.
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The passage ends with a somewhat obscure statement, which as you can see in the English translation, needed some parentheses work (2:72-73):
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“And when you killed a man, then you disagreed with respect to that, and Allah was to bring forth that which you were going to hide. So We said: Strike the (dead body) with part of the (Sacrificed cow), thus Allah brings the dead to life, and He shows you His signs so that you may understand.”
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The Quranic account bears little resemblance to the biblical ones, and there are no other biblical stories about ritual slaughtering of cows that could provide a clue as to the source of this Quranic material. I could not find any Jewish commentary, legend or folklore that could shed any light on the matter either.
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In the Bible, water mixed with the ashes of the red Heifer is used for ritual purification. How this was transformed to striking the slain body with parts of the sacrificed cow, only Allah knows.
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The Hardening of the Hearts

2:74 “Then your hearts hardened after that, so that they were like rocks, rather worse in hardness; and surely there are some rocks from which streams burst forth, and surely there are some of them which split asunder so water issues out of them, and surely there are some of them which fall down for fear of Allah, and Allah is not at all heedless of what you do.”
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I could not see how 2:74 follows 2:73. Why would the hearts of the Children of Israel harden after they carried out Allah’s instructions in regards to the cow? It seems to me like Muhammad just added this little extra for good measure, warning the Jews who ridicule him to watch it, because Allah heeds.
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By the way, in the Bible, the hardening (or strengthening) of the heart by God is mentioned a few times in relation to Pharaoh, in the book of Exodus. The Children of Israel, on the other hand, are described as being a “stiff-necked people” (4 times in the Bible), not a hard-hearted. Why authors of the Quran did not use this biblical allegory, I cannot say.
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There is, however, one reference in the Bible (Zechariah 7:12) where the people are said to have “… made their hearts as Shamir …” which in this verse would mean a very hard stone. So there is a remote possibility that this is the source for the reference to hardened hearts expression.
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There are quite a few biblical stories of the Children of Israel giving Moses a hard time, complaining about the hardships of desert life, but none are in relation to these ceremonial cows, and none tell of their being ridiculed by Moses.