فَأَرَىٰهُ ٱلْـَٔايَةَ ٱلْكُبْرَىٰ · فَكَذَّبَ وَعَصَىٰ
Fa-arāhu'l-āyata'l-kubrā · Fa-kadhdhaba wa ʿaṣā "So he showed him the greatest sign. But he denied and disobeyed."
From the seventeenth verse to the twenty-fifth there are nine verses, and all of them are joined with فَ:
fa-qul (18) · fa-arāhu (20) · fa-kadhdhaba (21) · thumma adbara (22) · fa-ḥashara (23) · fa-qāla (24) · fa-akhadhahu (25)
That is, the narrative flows without drawing breath. An offer, a miracle, a denial, a turning away, an assembly, a claim, a seizing.
And there are things not told in between. Moses's going to Egypt, his entering the palace, his encounter with the magicians, the parting of the sea — none of them is there. The Qurʾān tells this narrative at length in other sūras (al-Aʿrāf 7/103-137; Ṭāhā 20/9-79; al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/10-68); here it fits it into nine verses.
The scenes chosen are these: the call, the offer, the miracle, the refusal, the claim, the punishment.
That is, the sūra takes from the narrative only the course of the running beyond bounds. It leaves the rest.
I record this as an observation; the connecting particles of the verses and their content are in the text.
| View | Explanation |
|---|---|
| The staff | The rod that turned into a serpent. The first miracle shown in Pharaoh's presence |
| The white hand | The hand that came out of his breast shining white |
| Both together | The Qurʾān mentions the two together: "These are two proofs from your Lord" (al-Qaṣaṣ 28/32) |
| All the miracles | The Qurʾān says nine signs were given to Moses: "We gave Moses nine clear signs" (al-Isrāʾ 17/101) |
I impose no preference. What is to be recorded is this: the verse says "the greatest"; that is, what was shown was the highest of what could be shown.
The verb is not "he saw" but "he showed". Arā (Form IV) — to show. That is, Pharaoh did not see; it was shown to him. It was actively set before him.
This agrees with the finding recorded at al-Baqara 2/6: "unbelief is not not-knowing; it is covering over what one knows." And there a verse concerning this narrative was cited: "You have certainly known that none has sent these down but the Lord of the heavens and the earth" (al-Isrāʾ 17/102).
| Verb | Root | Where it happens |
|---|---|---|
| كَذَّبَ | ك-ذ-ب | Inside — not to accept, to say "a lie" |
| عَصَىٰ | ع-ص-ي | Outside — not to comply with a command, to resist |
عَصَىٰ — Root: ع-ص-ي. And the concrete sense of the root is worth recording: عَصَا (ʿaṣā) — a staff, a stick.
The connection the lexicographers set up is this: عَصَى ٱلْقَوْمُ — "the group parted from one another, dispersed"; and عَصَا is the staff that symbolises unity. In Arabic "to break the staff" (شَقَّ ٱلْعَصَا) means to part from the community.
And a coincidence is worth recording: the view is widespread that the sign shown to Pharaoh was the staff. And his response is described with a verb from the root of staff: ʿaṣā (he disobeyed).
This is not a claim of wordplay and I do not claim that the two words are from the same root — ʿaṣā (staff) and ʿaṣā (he disobeyed) are treated in the classical dictionaries under the same root letters, but the lexicographers are not in agreement as to whether they derive from a single root. I do not enter this disagreement and I draw no meaning from this coincidence of sound; I merely record it.
The order is meaningful. First the denial (inner), then the disobedience (outer). At al-Nabaʾ 78/27-28 there was the same order: first "they did not expect a reckoning" (inner), then "they denied" (outer).
Two neighbouring sūras set up the same ordering with two different pairs: the inner attitude comes first.