Home > Surah 5 - The Table Spread
The Torah not as a defunct or discarded book, but as a divinely protected source of "guidance and light" that served as the legal standard for prophets, rabbis, and scholars alike.
Surah 5:44:
Indeed, We sent down the Torah, in which was guidance and light. The prophets who submitted judged by it for the Jews, as did the rabbis and scholars by that with which they were entrusted of the Scripture of Allah, and they were witnesses thereto. So do not fear the people but fear Me, and do not exchange My verses for a small price. And whoever does not judge by what Allah has revealed – then it is those who are the disbelievers.
This verse states that the rabbis and scholars were "entrusted with the protection" of the Scripture.
If the Quran claims in other places (like 6:115) that "none can change His words," then the "entrustment" mentioned here cannot mean that humans had the power to fundamentally destroy or alter the text. Rather, it implies they were entrusted with its application and teaching.
If they had successfully corrupted the text, they would no longer be "witnesses" to the "Scripture of Allah," but witnesses to a forgery.
The verse uses the past tense to describe the prophets judging by the Torah, but it transitions into a present-tense warning for the current audience: "So do not fear the people... and do not exchange My verses for a small price."
This suggests that the "verses" being exchanged or ignored were the very ones found in the Torah present in 7th-century Arabia. If the Torah had been textually corrupted centuries prior, the warning not to "exchange" the verses would be irrelevant, as the "real" verses would already be gone.
The closing statement—that those who do not judge by what Allah revealed are disbelievers—is one of the most cited in Islamic jurisprudence.
If Allah revealed the Torah (as the verse affirms), and the Torah contains laws and prophecies that contradict later Quranic claims, the person is caught in a trap:
If they judge by the Torah (as commanded), they must accept its testimony (e.g., about the nature of the Covenant or the Messiah).
If they ignore the Torah's testimony to follow a conflicting claim, they are failing to "judge by what Allah revealed."
Surah 5:44 only reinforces the status of the Torah as a functional and divine authority. By identifying it as "guidance and light" and rebuking those who do not judge by it, the Quran validates the textual integrity of the Bible as it existed during the time of revelation.
The verse suggests that the primary issue was NOT the disappearance of the truth, but the disobedience of those who held it. This makes the physical Torah of the 7th century—which is archeologically accessible to us today—the objective standard for what the Quran calls "the judgment of Allah."