ثُمَّ بَعَثْنَا مِنۢ بَعْدِهِم مُّوسَىٰ وَهَٰرُونَ إِلَىٰ فِرْعَوْنَ وَمَلَإِي۟هِۦ بِـَٔايَٰتِنَا فَٱسْتَكْبَرُوا۟ … قَالَ مُوسَىٰٓ أَتَقُولُونَ لِلْحَقِّ لَمَّا جَآءَكُمْ أَسِحْرٌ هَٰذَا وَلَا يُفْلِحُ ٱلسَّٰحِرُونَ
"Then after them We sent Moses and Aaron with Our signs to Pharaoh and his notables. They grew proud, and they were a guilty people. · When the truth came to them from Us they said: 'This is plain sorcery.' · Moses said: 'Do you say this of the truth when it has come to you? Is this sorcery? Sorcerers do not prosper.' · They said: 'Have you come to turn us away from what we found our fathers upon, so that greatness in the land may belong to you two? We are not going to believe you.'"
The sentence in the seventy-sixth verse is on the same pattern as the second verse of the sūra, and this is why the narrative is placed here:
| Verse | Speaker | Sentence |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | al-Kāfirūn | Inna hādhā la-sāḥirun mubīn |
| 76 | Pharaoh and those around him | Inna hādhā la-siḥrun mubīn |
The only difference between the two sentences is that the one qualifies the person and the other what he brought.
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the sameness of wording in the two verses: the sūra gives the narrative not as a story but as the historical instance of the sentence in the second verse. And there is one more datum supporting this reading: the thirty-ninth verse had already said kadhālika kadhdhaba'lladhīna min qablihim.
أَتَقُولُونَ لِلْحَقِّ لَمَّا جَآءَكُمْ — and the backbone word of the sūra occurs in Moses's answer: al-ḥaqq.
How the sentence is built must be recorded: Moses does not say "this is not sorcery". A-taqūlūna li'l-ḥaqqi lammā jāʾakum — "do you say this of the truth when it has come to you?"
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the object of the sentence: the answer does not begin by refuting the claim; it begins by naming what the claim is about. The argument, that is, is turned from the question "what is this?" to the question "what are you calling it?"
| Verse | Who does not prosper |
|---|---|
| 17 | Lā yufliḥu'l-mujrimūn |
| 69 | Alladhīna yaftarūna ʿala'llāhi'l-kadhiba lā yufliḥūn |
| 77 | Wa lā yufliḥu's-sāḥirūn |
The concrete sense of the root ف-ل-ح: to split, to plough the soil. Fallāḥ — a farmer. And the sense "to prosper" comes from this picture: to split open what is closed and reach what one wants.
لِتَلْفِتَنَا عَمَّا وَجَدْنَا عَلَيْهِ ءَابَآءَنَا (78) — and the ground of the objection is the fathers.
The root ل-ف-ت: to turn, to turn about. The rhetorical term iltifāt used earlier is from this same root — the turning of the address in another direction. And in the twenty-second verse of the sūra this very linguistic event occurred. I record this as an observation about the root; I make no claim of a reference between the verses.
The argument from the fathers was treated in many places in the index (al-Zukhruf 43/22-23, Luqmān 31/21). I rely on that treatment.
وَتَكُونَ لَكُمَا ٱلْكِبْرِيَآءُ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ — "so that greatness in the land may belong to you two."
I record this as an observation, and it connects with the diagnosis of kibr in Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin): those who raise the objection ascribe their own motives to the other side. And indeed the seventy-fifth verse had said of them fa'stakbarū. The sūra, that is, records the quality of those who make the accusation before the accusation itself. This is a sequence that can be verified within the sūra.