al-Dukhān 44:19

Wa an lā taʿlū ʿala'llāh, innī ātīkum bi-sulṭānin mubīn

"'And do not exalt yourselves against God. I bring you a manifest proof.'"

The messenger's speech has two items, and both are joined with an:

1. Hand over (18) — a demand for an act. 2. Do not exalt yourselves (19) — a demand for an attitude.

The order is worth noting: first the work to be done, then the stance to be taken. And the second is the cause of the first — what lies beneath the not handing over is self-exaltation.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the order of the two items.

The concrete sense: to rise, to be high. ʿUluww — height. Aʿlā — higher. Taʿālā — He is exalted.

And the root's use of a human being is negative in the Qurʾān: to rise is to climb to a position that does not belong to one.

Now let us look at the chain within the sūra — this is one of the cleanest internal links of al-Dukhān:

The warning and the verdict are given with the same root. The warning is in the imperative and negative; the verdict comes with kāna + an active participle, that is, as a settled attribute.

I present this as my own reading, and its ground is the shared root of the two verses: the sūra announces the outcome in the language of the offence. The principle recorded for baṭsh in al-Burūj works here too.

عَلَى ٱللَّهِ — the particle. "Against God". The direction of the self-exaltation, that is, is specified: not against people, but against God.

And this is a fine point — I give it as my own reading: Pharaoh's exalting himself over people was already visible. The verse gives that visible self-exaltation another name. A superiority established over human beings is, in the messenger's eyes, a taking of position against God.

The root was treated in al-Ḥāqqa, al-Ḥashr, al-Najm and al-Raḥmān. The summary: to be set over, to prevail, to have one's judgement carry. Sallaṭa — to loose a thing upon a thing.

And the most striking side of the word in the Qurʾān is here: sulṭān is used in the sense both of power and of proof.

The link between the two senses is made by the lexicographers thus: a proof too is a kind of sovereignty — it rules the mind, it cannot be withstood.

I record this, and it has a consequence: in the verse Moses speaks in Pharaoh's own language. Pharaoh has sulṭān (power) in his hand; Moses says he too has a sulṭān in his hand — but of another kind.

This reading is mine; its ground is the word's having two senses and the identity of the addressee.

مُّبِين — the fourth occurrence. This time it qualifies the proof. The table of the five occurrences was given at the second verse.

And ātīkum is an active participle: "I bring / I am bringing to you". Not a verb but a noun; the bringing, that is, is presented as a position — the messenger is already in that state.