The covenant with the Children of Israel

The covenant (mithaq) is the pledge God took from the Children of Israel to act on the Torah. Muhammad Rashid Rida holds that the solemn covenant is to act on the whole Torah with strength and diligence, which includes the good tidings of Jesus and Muhammad, and that the people broke it by disbelieving in the signs and killing the prophets. ^{1 2} An-Nisa 155

Rida notes that the lifting of the mountain over them was because of their covenant, so that they would take what had been sent down to them with strength. He holds that it was apparently one of the cosmic signs, though the text is not a categorical statement on this. ¹

Rida sets out what he reads in the final chapters of the book of Deuteronomy in the translation he quotes, where Moses commands the Levites to keep the Torah beside the ark, and where the Children of Israel are said to become corrupt after his death. He argues from this that the people were entrusted with keeping the Torah, that it contains good tidings of the Prophet ﷺ, and he holds that Paran is Mecca, and its mountain is Abu Qubays. ²

Rida notes that what they broke of the covenant, their disbelief in God's signs and their killing of prophets such as Zechariah and John, and their saying that their hearts are uncircumcised, is the cause of the curse, wrath, the stamping of humiliation and poverty, and the loss of their kingdom that befell them. ^{2 3}

This is Rida's reading of the covenant, and his view on Mount Paran is his own; the opposing view is not presented here. The passage he cites from the Torah should be checked against a printed edition before publication.