What do human beings do when it is clear to them what they must do but they are reluctant, for the sake of protecting some material benefit (shorn of meaning)? They pretend things are not clear and they demand more clarification! Take the matter of Israeli occupation of Palestine. People who wish to avoid following the command of justice say it is not clear, for instance, whether to call something a genocide or only genocidal but not yet genocide, whether to compare it with some other event in history or not, not clear how to think about “settlements” or “occupation” because everything seems to be a form of settlement or occupation. In short, things are more complicated they say so they can’t just say that it is clearly wrong to take someone’s land by force and that this land should be returned! no! that is too simple and therefore not actionable. to avoid doing what truth commands, humans have the capacity to seek escape into terminological unclarity and demand greater specificity so that action can be avoided and postponed until such specificity and clarity can be acheived. And what is this clarity? In turns out that this clarity is attained when one’s interests and benefits, not justice, are served and yet one’s delay in action is justified and also it’s eventual peformance is not seen as deficient in any way. When Moses talks about the cow that neither tills the field nor is used for watering (clearly an animal who is not of great material significance for the people) and yet has no blemish (lest it be thought that the command is being followed in a deficient way by killing an undesirable animal), only then they say that Moses has come with the truth! But the details about the animal make no difference to the truth of doing what is commanded by God’s messenger in the service of justice! They now accept it as true because it justifies their reluctance and gives the impression that they have carried through with the command when in fact they subverted the real aim of the command, which was justice. They killed an animal that they deemed expendable and that nevertheless was without blemish so that they appear to have carried out the command fully, instead of killing an unwanted and sickly animal.
The command to sacrifice is a command whose aim is for human beings to find the truth of resurrection! its a command whose aim is justice – the heart finds justice in life after death and in understanding that death is not the end of life! verse 72-73 are about this. how can human beings understand the truth of resurrection? By looking at signs that make it known. How?
A dead animal’s body and dead human’s body are alike. you can see it clearly when you bring them together that the blood and muscles and other elements are similar. Both creatures, once alive, are now dead and yet their bodies are there (for a while after their death). The bodies then must already be dead when the cow and the human being were both alive, because those bodies are the same now as when they were alive! Bodies do not make the difference between animal and human and between life and death. The body of the cow does not transfer/give life to the human when it touches it (or when human beings consume its meat). The bodies are dead. They had always been dead! Both bodies, dead, were therefore alive by the giving of life to them by One who must therefore be One who can give life to what is dead. He was giving dead things (bodies) life and that is what kept both alive! The meat of the cow, its body, has no power to give life to the dead body of the human being. A life-giving, sustainer was using the dead body of the living cow to provide His life and sustenance to the dead body of a living human being. This One, by whose life dead bodies have life before they don’t have life, shows in this a sign to me that He is able to give life to what is dead. And it is this One i need to know exists and is my maker for my real interests and benefits to be safeguarded. My reluctance to sacrifice the cow and to sacrifice it without understanding the meaning of it (demonstrated by my doing it only when i have “protected” my material interests and my image before others) deprives me from being able to see the sign of resurrection that God shows to me by directing my eyes to the dead material bodies of the sacrificed animal). The material conditions in which one acts with justice and aims at justice die and pass. They are already dead matter that look alive to us because we assume matter has, as if, life and meaning on its own and by itself. But how could it? Bodies are dead except that they are sustained by One who is able to give life to what is dead. The justice and life and sustenance of this One live on and these are what I need to feel secure as a human being. No land, my own or stolen from others, no home, no bodily/material object on its own can protect my interests as a human being and cannot benefit me.
The Quran as Revelation 