5.12 – Certainly God took a covenant with the Sons of Israel . . . believe in My messengers and support them
Sūra 5 is one of the most important sūras for understanding the Quran’s concept of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity on the one hand and the newly developing religion (dīn, v. 3) on the other. It contains a number of references to the earlier scriptures, the Torah (tawrāt, v. 43) and the Gospel (injīl, v. 46), as well as explicit references to Christians (naṣārā, v. 14) and Jews (yahūd, v. 18). It also contains one of the Quran’s three most extensive passages on ‘Īsā, the quranic Jesus.
With “God took a covenant with the Sons of Israel,” the sūra begins a series of claims that may or may not match what Jews and Christians believe. Verse 12 says that Allah included in his covenant the stipulation that the Children of Israel would believe in and support Allah’s messengers. Muslim commentators interpreted this to mean that “the messengers” included and culminated in – and, for some, primarily referred to – Muhammad.