He said: They responded with the words, “Haṭi samqāthā azma mazbā,” which in Arabic would be: “ḥabbatu ḥinṭah ḥamrāʾ mathqūbah fīhā shaʿratun sawdāʾ— a pierced red grain of wheat containing a black hair.” (1)

God, exalted is He, mentions that He punished them for this defiance by sending upon them the scourge (al-rijz) He had decreed, namely the plague. This is established in the two Ṣaḥīḥ collections through the report of al-Zuhrī from ʿĀmir ibn Saʿd (2), and—by way of Mālik—from Muḥammad ibn al-Munkadir and Sālim Abū al-Naḍr (3), from ʿĀmir ibn Saʿd, from Usāmah ibn Zayd, that the Messenger of God ﷺ said:

“Indeed this illness (or: this sickness) is a scourge with which some of the nations before you were punished.”

Al-Nasāʾī (4) and Ibn Abī Ḥātim—whose wording is given here—likewise transmitted it through al-Thawrī, from Ḥabīb ibn Abī Thābit, from Ibrāhīm ibn Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ, from his father, and from Usāmah ibn Zayd and Khuzaymah ibn Thābit, who said that the Messenger of God ﷺ declared:

“The plague is a scourge, a punishment with which those who came before you were afflicted.” (5)

Al-Ḍaḥḥāk reported from Ibn ʿAbbās that al-rijz means punishment; the same was said by Mujāhid, Abū Mālik, al-Suddi, al-Ḥasan, and Qatādah. Abū al-ʿĀliyah said it signifies wrath. Al-Shaʿbī maintained that al-rijz refers either to the plague or to intense cold, while Saʿīd ibn Jubayr said it is specifically the plague.

After the Israelites had secured control of Jerusalem, they remained there, and the Prophet of God Joshua—through whom God had granted them victory—continued to govern them by the Book of God, the Torah, until God took him to Himself at the age of one hundred and twenty-seven. Thus he lived twenty-seven years after Moses.