70

And We made a covenant with the Children of Israel, to believe in Allahu ta’ālā and His messengers (rusul), and We sent messengers (rusul) to them. Every time a Messenger (rasūl) came to them, from among them, with what their souls did not desire, in the way of truth, they denied it; some, of them, they denied, and some, of them, they slay, such as Zachariah and John (the use of [the present tense] yaqtulūn, 'they slay', instead of [the perfect tense] qatalū is to narrate past events [as if in the present] and to conclude [in harmony with] the end-rhyme of the verses).